A Key Called Promise
by Nightfall Rising
Summary: Slytherin has been lumbered with a disagreeable, low-class, shouty, raggedy little troll. With a most unreliable sense of self-preservation. Ick. And he's even half *muggle.* Or maybe just half mother-hen... But either way, noisy, and trouble, and... an excellent decoy, actually, and oi, Snape, what do you want for your History notes?
1. September, 1971: First Year

**Disclaimer:** Profitless fanwork.

**Credits:** Characters and setting by J.K. Rowling. Beta and britpicking by _wandering in thought space_ (thank yooooouuuuuu). Errors by my stubbornness. Title and opening quote by Paul Bunyan.

**Series summary & chronology:** see profile.

**Art** will be posted in the crossposted chapters at Archive of Our Own. Links will be in my profile. There is at least one per chapter in this story, and I hope to keep that up. Requests are welcome; no specific promises, but I usually do the ones that inspire me.

**Shameless begging**  
Please, please review. Not only does it keep me motivated to post (seriously, exposing my baby to the world is often much harder than writing, and takes emotional energy I don't always have), but telling me what you like may pay off. I don't finish fine-tuning my stories until they're posted, and sometimes not even then. You might also inspire art.

**Canon Compliance**  
It is advised that the reader be familiar with the biography of Harry Potter written by Ms. Rowling. The reader should be aware that this excellent and illuminating seven-volume series was fact-checked by Ms. Skeeter rather than Miss Granger. It therefore cannot be relied on in the matter of dates. Furthermore, Ms. Rowling's books are written from the point of view of their subject, and not only contain a distinctly pro-Gryffindor bias but largely confine themselves to what Mr. Potter saw, heard, assumed, and speculated, rather than strictly adhering to historical fact.

_This_ is a Slytherin story, and truth is subjective.

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_I have a Key in my bosom called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any Lock in Doubting Castle.  
—The Pilgrim's Progress_

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_**September, 1971**__: __**First year**_

Evan was on his guard. The Welcome Feast had been amazing: more well-made and satisfying food than even Mulciber could eat, although he'd certainly tried. Obviously the school was lulling them into a food-coma from which they wouldn't be able to rouse themselves to… well, something. Argue with the rules, maybe, or ask inconvenient questions, or just make trouble.

Personally, he wanted to spend all night wandering the halls and taking sketches to send home. Not that his parents hadn't seen the place every day for seven years themselves, but his father always said that fresh eyes made a sight new.

He wasn't going to wander, though. The unrealistically blond prefect, Malfoy, had been very clear about how displeased he would be if anyone lost Slytherin points, or even just attracted negative attention. After what he'd done to the scarecrow boy just for saying _one sentence_ at the feast in a marked accent and bad clothes (to a mudblood, admittedly, which did make it much worse), no one was going to risk it.

Nearly setting the Sorting Hat on fire had been uncivilized, too, but also somewhat impressive in a first year. The suggestion of power and the lack of restraint had probably nullified each other. So, one might conclude, it was just the talking that had gotten him zapped.

The scarecrow had asked, afterwards (almost incomprehensibly, and not just because of what Malfoy had done to his face. It wasn't even a musical kind of incomprehensible), where one went to get fixed up. He'd repeated the directions carefully, written them down, and then asked the prefect if the spells would wear off on their own before breakfast.

Frowning, Malfoy had told him they would, and he'd nodded and turned away to start unpacking his books. Having his fingers fused together gave him some trouble, but he was managing. "Aren't you going?"

The kid turned (Evan had to look away from his face), and said stonily, "You didn't curse me in public. So united front's important."

Malfoy looked at him coolly for a minute, one eyebrow up. Then he turned to the rest of them. Mulciber had been sniggering at the scarecrow's misfortune. This would have been unwise of him if Evan had cared, because everyone had heard McGonagall say his first name right out loud, and he was wide open to be laughed at back. Evan and the curly-haired one, Avery, had just been paying quiet attention.

At least, he thought Avery was paying attention. His father said Avery's father Thaddeus was a sharp customer. From the way the son had been acting at the feast, though, Evan was wondering whether he took after his other parent. There was something about the eyes.

"Your yearmate's a disgrace," Malfoy told them, not much less contemptuously than he'd spoken to the scarecrow, "but he has a proper team spirit. Slytherin can work with that." He flicked a _finite_ at the skinny boy, leaving him looking (almost) normal again, except for his jaw hanging open for the long moment before he snapped it shut. "It's up to you to make him presentable. Be quick about it, or you'll answer to me and Slughorn won't have anything to do with you."

That last part seemed an odd threat. Evan opened his mouth to ask about it, but Avery was faster. "How are we supposed to do that?" he asked, eyeing the bony collection of nearly rags contemptuously.

"I don't care," Malfoy said, and headed back for the common room. His hair fanned out and caught the light as he turned. It was so pale Evan didn't even know what colors a person would mix to paint it.

Not wanting anything to do with any of this nonsense, Evan fished his bathrobe out of his trunk and went to take a shower. When he came back, Avery and Mulciber were both unconscious, fallen against the walls as though they'd been hurled into them by an explosion. He stared at the scarecrow.

"No one's 'fixing' my robes before I know they won't botch it," the scarecrow stated, meeting Evan's eyes levelly. "I'll take bossing-about from him, he's in charge. You lot aren't."

"I can barely understand a word you say," Evan told him. "The robes are nothing, next to that."

The scarecrow gave an unpleasant smile and said something like 'pig-melon.'

"If you say so," Evan said. Even if that was supposed to be an insult, he just wasn't interested. "But don't talk in public until you've listened more, will you?"

"Don't talk in public until you've listened more," the scarecrow parroted. It wasn't mockery; he was clearly making a good-faith attempt to mirror Evan's accent.

"Not good," he said, "but better."

The scarecrow didn't come anywhere near smiling at him, but the mean look in his dark eyes eased out. "What _should_ I do about these, d'you think?" he asked, plucking at his robes. They weren't just patched, but had odd seams here and there that suggested they'd been cut down. They weren't even regulation Hogwarts black. They must have been once, but they'd faded to a grubby charcoal.

He considered telling the scarecrow to ask a teacher in the morning. There was the possibility, though, that Malfoy would take umbrage if there was still an obvious disgrace among them at breakfast. He sighed. He didn't want to be involved, but not troubling himself would probably not be worth the trouble.

"My cousin Narcissa's in our year," he said reluctantly. "She might know some clothing spells. Or one of her sisters might. Give me your robes; I'll see if I can get hold of one of them."

The scarecrow nodded. He pulled his robe off, and dug a spare out of his trunk to hand to Evan. His shirt and trousers were, if possible, worse. The shoes actually hurt Evan's eyes, they were so scruffy. Too big for him, too, and he wasn't even wearing enough socks to make up the difference.

"You're welcome," Evan said dryly.

"You're doing what you were told," the scarecrow said. His effort to enunciate made him sound like he was being more patient than he wanted to be. Or maybe that was what he was doing. Hard to say. "I'm cooperating."

Evan didn't like that much, but he looked at their other two roommates. They didn't look like waking up anytime soon, and stood (sprawled) snoring testament to the fact that the walking botch was fully capable of not cooperating.

"Fair enough," he allowed, and went to find Cissy. She didn't quite see the gratitude situation the scarecrow's way, but was willing to take sketches of herself and her roommates to send home in trade instead of an IOU. Evan felt he'd gotten off lightly, even when the tiny one giggled at him in a way that sounded neither shy nor innocent.

When he got back with two almost-presentable sets of robes, Avery and Mulciber were still out cold. He didn't see the scarecrow anywhere. What was his name? Something sharp, awful, and unwizardly. "Snide? Snood?" he called.

"Snape," the scarecrow called back from the bathroom. After a pause, "Snood? Really?"

"Did you get lost?" Evan asked cordially. His mum was very good at cordial; she could make anyone blush.

"Maybe?"

That was unexpected, so he went in. The other boy was staring in perplexity at the shower, occasionally reaching out to touch the pipes or faucet.

"You've never seen a shower before," Evan said flatly. Even with the kid's clothes as awful as they were, it was hard to credit.

The scarecrow gave him a sullen, aggressive look, hunched his shoulders, and visibly decided to brazen it out. "This one's complicated. I'll work it out," he said with narrow, flinty eyes, daring Evan to make something of it. Then he looked back at the controls. To be fair, they were complicated, and had a lot more to them than just a temperature dial. In a grim tone, he added, "Eventually."

Evan sighed again, aggravated. "I suppose we'll all be in trouble if you haven't washed by morning," he said with vague resentment, and showed him how to work it. This time he did get a nod of thanks, at least. "Muggleborn, are you?"

"No."

He didn't look like he was lying. Or like someone who'd never heard the word and was saying no on reflex. And he had stunned the other two. "Well, that's something. But look, I'm not going to have to lead you by the hand all year, am I?"

The sharp face drew tight. "Go get your beauty sleep, Rosier," Snape snarled. "I can bloody well manage."

"Glad to hear it," Evan replied, and went back into the bedroom.

Before he did the rest of his unpacking, he pulled out the copy of Nature's Nobility his father had sent with him so he could check up on his yearmates. He left it on the bed with the horribly battered footlocker, with a note. It read,

_Better learn who you can swear at_.

In the morning, the book was on Snape's bedside table, not the rubbish bin. It had a bookmark in it, but not so far in as to be an obvious lie to get Evan off his back.

Evan nodded a little to himself, thinking that Malfoy had been right. A little coaching was needed, yes, but then they could all happily get down to the business of politely pretending the grotty, uncivilized pleb didn't exist.

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Art at AO3; link in profile


	2. September, 1972: Second Year

Severus tilts at windmills and is Seriously Underestimated. You _do not _mess with the baby snakes.

**Warnings **for off-screen, unromanticized, non-graphic child abuse (taken seriously) and sarcastic Nazi references.

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**_November, 1972: Second Year_**

"A word, please," Evan said as Snape came out of the infirmary. He wasn't surprised at the suspicious look this netted him; they never had much to do with each other. Snape never had much to do with anyone who wasn't a Gryffindor or so lost with their homework they'd pay for his help and put up with his himness.

"What do you want?"

"I want to talk to you. You'd prefer it to be in private."

"I've gotten all the lectures I intend to take for one day, Rosier," Snape bit off. "All the curses, too."

"Did you know you've lost Slytherin fifty points?"

"Slytherin deserved to lose a _hundred_ points, maybe a thousand, but not because of me!"

"Well," he said patiently, "come into a classroom with me and we can talk about it."

Snape eyed him with disfavor. "It's going to be Mulciber if it isn't you, isn't it."

"Probably Narcissa. You did say you'd had all the curses you wanted today?"

He sighed, aggravated but appropriately threatened. "_Fine._"

Once ensconced in what looked like it had last been used as an Arithmancy classroom, Evan told him, "The bottom line is you _just can't do this kind of thing_."

"Just did."

"How well did that work out for you?"

"Don't care."

Evan stared at him. "You just spent all day in the infirmary and the entire House wants to kill you."

"_I don't care_."

"How can you possibly not care that people who can get to you while you sleep are plotting your lingering death?"

"Someone had to do something," Snape said, tight-lipped and cold. "Clearly no one was going to."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Evan told him, "but you couldn't really have thought that attacking a fifth-year was going to get you anything you wanted."

"I didn't attack him. I talked to him. He pulled his wand first."

"Yes, all right," Evan said, not really agreeing, "I imagine he did, after you'd told him someone had to do something about him."

"I didn't say that, I just said he had to stop."

"Oh, _much_ better. Stop what, exactly?"

"Molesting Lockhart."

That stopped Evan in his tracks. "Lockhart in our house? In _first year_?"

"Lockhart in our house. In first year."

"…Why do you think he's doing that?"

"Because I pay attention."

"Exactly why do you think he's doing that?"

"Exactly? Because he's disgusting and Lockhart's all girly-looking and blond and gullible and too dim to know it's bad for him, I expect. Or maybe he wants something from someone in that year and Lockhart's gullible and too dim for anyone to suspect."

Evan rubbed his eyes. He couldn't tell whether Snape was misunderstanding him on purpose or not, and didn't want to know. "What _makes you think_ Simmons is molesting Lockhart. A fifth year after a first year, that's… not done. That's an accusation you'd better have the proof to back up."

"Well," Snape said, looking somewhat taken aback at being listened to, "first I saw that Lockhart was preening more than usual—"

"How could you tell?" Evan asked, droll.

He got a sidelong amused look. "I wouldn't have thought much of it, except that Lestrange and Rowle were treating him like they weren't sure whether they were impressed or thought he was contagious, and your cousin—Regulus, I mean, obviously, not Black—just looked like he was eating his heart out fretting."

"You do pay attention," Evan said slowly. It wasn't a comfortable thought. Snape never looked like he was paying attention to people; he always seemed to be reading or scribbling over his books. "It still seems like a leap, though."

"I got enough out of Regulus in the end to put it together."

"…Why would Reggie tell you anything?"

Snape looked at Evan like he'd never met anyone so stupid in his life. This being one of his default expressions, Evan ignored it. "He panics over Potions and Herbology. Too much to memorize. His roommates are too dumb to build up credit helping him study."

"Ah. And did you talk to Lockhart, before you went to 'talk to' Simmons?"

Snape shook his unkempt head—disbelievingly, not in denial. "He _patted my hand_," he told Evan incredulously, "and said he understood why I was jealous, but 'it' was just not to be because they were in love. I didn't ask which of them he thought I was jealous of; I was afraid he'd tell me. And then I'd know whether it was more appropriate to throw up or toss him out a window as a cure for vanity and have to do it."

"Huh." Evan mulled. "But, Snape, if he's not upset about it—"

"He's _eleven_."

"You're twelve."

"And the age of consent is sixteen. And he's _seriously, seriously_ mental and is probably not going to be fit to decide things for himself even when he's legally old enough. Maybe not when he's _fifty_."

"He is mental," Evan conceded, "but so are you. What I mean is, why exactly did you decide this was your problem?"

"Because _no one else was doing anything,_" Snape told him again, slowly and loudly, like Evan might not speak English. This was rich coming from Snape, who'd shaped up well but still lapsed into sour-voweled incomprehensibility when he lost his temper.

"You don't have enough fights on your hands already?"

Snape made an _I really do_ face. "He's eleven," he repeated.

"You're twelve. And you're already in trouble _all the time_."

"Yes. I already am. Maybe going from bad to worse isn't as scary as going from fine to bad. If I want to not call all the rest of you blind or cowards."

"Okay," Evan said, instead of _I think you just did_. It was possible that 'blind' was justified, so fair enough. "But, Snape, even if all that is true, you still can't do things like this."

"And what was I supposed to do, just let it stand?" Snape asked incredulously. "Even if Lockhart doesn't mind now, what if he starts minding? Suppose he wants to stop, or Simmons demands more than he wants to give? Will he be able to say no and make it stick? And if nobody's saying anything when it's Lockhart, who else has it been? Who else has it been who's been smarter, maybe smart enough to notice that _nobody says anything_ and speaking up won't get them anywhere? Maybe worse than nowhere! If nobody's saying anything against it, who's going to get the idea that it's _not _'not done' next? What was I going to do," he finished scornfully, "Tell a teacher? Tell a _prefect_? Sure, Rosier, that would work. My word would mean loads next to his."

"Something else," Evan said. "Not a frontal assault, for Salazar's sake."

That got through. Snape slumped, all the fizz and fury sliding right out of him. He looked at his hands, and then looked back at Evan. "What else have I got?" he asked, sounding very, very tired.

"Huh," Evan said again, thoughtfully. He looked at Snape, who had grown a couple of inches but whose robes hadn't been altered (except by the Gryffindor idiots) since Narcissa had fixed them for him back in their first year. Who needed money badly enough that he wanted to be paid for tutoring instead of using it to build goodwill, and still never seemed to have anything new. Evan suspected him of sending it all home. No name, no influence. No friends but one loudmouthed female Gryffie mudblood, which was worse than no friends at all.

"Fair point," he said finally. "But don't do it again."

Snape said something dripping with sarcasm. It sounded like 'zig hail, mine fury.'

He was saying it to Evan's back, though, because Evan was meandering off, lost in thought. There was just too much bother boiling up his air. He had too much homework to be distracted by the fallout from other people's horribleness. Then there was Snape, who clearly wasn't going to stop making trouble that made them all look bad until someone killed him. Evan did not have time for all this nastiness and furor, and didn't want to.

Three days later, Evan opened his eyes to see a large rag doll with a hatchet face perched on the side of his bed, giving him a quizzical look. He just barely managed not to yelp.

"What did you _do_?" Snape asked.

"What?" Evan asked feebly. He was in no way awake enough for Snape.

"Simmons was expelled last night. Wand snapped and everything."

Evan turned these words over in his head until they gelled. Tea. Tea was what he needed. Very strong tea. Or some cold water. "Oh."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, I uh…" He felt there was some reason he shouldn't answer the question, but there was so much muzziness he couldn't lay his hands on it. "I told Narcissa I thought Simmons had a thing for Malfoy. In front of Flitwick and Lockhart."

Snape's face had a very odd expression. "Let me guess. Lockhart shouted 'no, no he doesn't, he loves me, me, me.'"

"Yeah, I thought he would," Evan agreed, barely getting his hand to his face in time for an enormous yawn. "So."

"So," Snape echoed, the odd look intensifying. "Hm. Creative, efficient, effective. And no one needed to snitch, exactly. Rosier, you are in _so much trouble_."

"Uh." Tea was what he wanted. Why was there no tea? "With who?"

"Whom. Oh, not with anyone, you're just in trouble."

Alarmed enough to clear away a bit of the fuzz, he realized that it was a _smile_ starting to pull at the corners of Snape's mouth. "…Why?"

"Because," Snape said, and now the grin had overtaken (and, Evan realized with a dull, artistic shock, transformed) his face, "you've let me see both that you don't like fuss and that you are _so_ much better at this than me. Than I am," he corrected himself, which almost made up for correcting Evan.

_Discretion_. That was why he shouldn't have answered the question. _Never volunteer information_. "Um," he said unenthusiastically.

"That's right," said Snape. He looked, damn him, positively chipper. "My problems are my problems, but Slytherin's problems?"

"No," Evan said weakly. "I—no. No no no no no no no. Oh, no. No."

"That's fine," Snape said, with an indifferent shrug that was full of confidence and blackmail and _lies_. "I'll just have to go on handling things that come up myself, that's all. As best I can. I just thought you'd prefer to take over, since you don't seem to like my methods."

Evan desperately scrabbled for sanity, and came up with, "Quidditch! I want to try out for Quidditch! Sherrinford's sixth-year! I have to train! If I don't make reserve next year someone else will replace him! And I have homework! Lots of theory this year! Very complicated! You respect the primacy of homework, Snape!"

"Theory," Snape said generously, grinning like an axe murderer, "I _am_ good at. And throwing things. Darts for preference, but I'm sure I could get used to balls. I don't mind donating some time, if you're going to be useful. Oh," he added, swinging off Evan's bed, "and don't worry, I won't let anyone give me the credit. Wouldn't do me any good, I don't think. You'd better hurry up if you don't want to completely miss breakfast."

Evan watched him go, eyes wide and staring. Only once the door had closed did he realize he should have obliviated the sharper-than-he-acted bastard. Or, no, that was an advanced spell; he'd seen Mum use it but... yeah, he should have just brained him with a paperweight. He fell back to his pillow with a squishy thump, closed his eyes, and moaned words he'd never used before.

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Art at AO3: links in profile

(yes, links; there are two for this chapter)

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By supper, everyone was sneaking glances at him out of the corners of their eyes, with only a few exceptions. Lockhart was red-eyed, sniffly, guilt-stricken, and Reggie was very awkwardly trying to comfort him while looking like he'd rather be in Australia. Narcissa looked so smug that she was clearly responsible for spreading the story. Snape occasionally snapped at someone that yes, he was glad the slime was gone, but if he could get people expelled he wouldn't waste the talent on anyone but Potter, _obviously_.

Malfoy, whose glances at Evan were considering but not veiled, tended to acted like he was Head Boy. Slytherin as a whole tended to treat him that way, too, and not just because Shacklebolt didn't throw his weight around. He was their dominant seventh-year prefect, after all. Their captain, as Ev's cousin Bella had been last year.

Therefore, when he cleared his throat in the common room that night, everyone looked up. "The snake that strikes without warning," he said to no one in particular, following the traditional formula, "is the pit viper called fer-de-lance, _Bothrops asper_. It avoids danger, but is unpredictable when disturbed, and turns like lightning to bite a pursuer: the serpent world's answer to the Parthian Shot."

"What about copperheads?" Greengrass asked, to a scattering of laughter. Evan was usually somewhere on the pleased to not-interested spectrum about his hair color, which was more red-gold than true copper. This, though, made him want a hood to pull up. He didn't allow himself an expression.

"They," said Narcissa in a smug _this is MY cousin_ voice, looping her arm around Evan's, "freeze in a crisis and let themselves be stepped on before they bite."

"You know your serpents, Black," Malfoy said, smiling benevolently at her. This was unusually graceful for him; Evan supposed he didn't take it as a usurpation of his authority, coming from a second-year girl. And, of course, Narcissa was pretty. Once Malfoy had gotten a demure smile back from her, he went back to his homework. So did everyone else, except the ones playing chess or go.

No one said anything to Evan outright. Simmons' friends obviously wanted his blood, which was only natural. There were only three of them, though, and they weren't going to move on him while he was in favor.

They weren't going to move on him at all if they were smart. Not in any serious way. It was about as intelligent to make Evan's mum mad as either of his aunts. Of course, as she always told him, anger did tend to make people stupid.

He saw one of them having a quietly furious conversation with a very drawling Malfoy, and saw their jaw actually drop a few centimeters. The conversation devolved into intense whispering, and the fifth-year walked away from it dazed. After that, he and his friends still gave Evan the stink-eye, but not so murderously. He wondered, without much interest, if they thought he should have brought the problem to them. He'd thought about it, but there were some blights that couldn't be pruned or made prudent, had to be pulled out by the roots.

He got a few jealous looks from some of his yearmates and the third and fourth-years who still hadn't attracted a Slytherin name. The first years looked impressed, apart from Lockhart, who was too sunk in misery to pay attention, and the Goldstein girl, who came from a mostly-Ravenclaw family and needed things like this explained to her. Reggie gave Evan a big hug and didn't fight being tickled—at least, he still kicked, but he didn't use magic. A few of the older students who went to bed early even patted him on the shoulder in passing.

That was about it, except that sometimes, afterwards, people would call, 'Lance,' and expect him to turn around. This wasn't Hufflepuff, after all. There weren't going to be balloons.

When they were alone together in the library, Narcissa said, "I thought Snape hated everyone, but he looked really pleased for you, Ev." The tilt of her head said she was positively eaten up with curiosity.

He flushed. "Snape's peculiar."

"Hm," Narcissa commented, and went on staring critically at him until he propped _1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi_ open on the table between them, like a wall.

Later that week, Slughorn kept him after class to invite him to a 'little Christmas get-together with a few other students.' Evan managed to accept with casual and unflattered pleasure and without tripping over his tongue, but his letter home that night had a lot of exclamation points in it.

The next time Evan bought a copy of Snape's history notes (he did try to keep awake, but, well, Binns), there was a note at the end. _You're not a snake at all,_ it read, _you're a dragonfish._

Evan thought he ought to be insulted by that, or at least affronted over Snape feeling it was his place to have opinions on the subject. For some reason, though (maybe because when Snape insulted people he didn't do it on the sly), it gave him a sort of a warm feeling.

* * *

The dragonfish is a small and very ugly deep-sea predator with a natural lightbulb-on-a-stick that it uses to lure other fish into range of its huge and very fanged jaw. The reader may be familiar with this fish from _Finding Nemo_.


	3. January, 1973: Second Year

Severus gets birthday presents, Narcissa gets an epiphany, Lucius gets a headache, the common room gets trashed, and Lockhart... is gonna need a lot more nail polish.

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**_January,__ 1973_**

"Oi," Mulciber said, jostling Evan and Avery in the ribs. "Snape's got an owl."

"I'm not even interested in the punchline," Avery said without looking up from the kipper he was dissecting, "because your jokes are never funny."

"Because your sense of humor dribbled out when you were dropped on your head as a baby," Mulciber corrected. "It wasn't a joke."

Evan joined Avery in looking down the table to where Snape usually walled himself and his breakfast off from the rest of the world with a book. He was, indeed, feeding an owl a piece of sausage. He looked as if he would have liked to put his package in his pocket, but it was too big for that.

When they ganged up on him in the common room later (Evan was sitting with his cousins, trying to do his charms homework and stop Reggie just copying his history text out verbatim), Snape looked unsurprised and bored.

"Do I demand you turn out your pockets whenever you get a package?" he asked rhetorically. "I do not. On account of one's mail is one's own business. There's a law about it. 'Tampering with the mail' is the name of the crime."

"Oh, give over," Mulciber said, and twisted his arms behind his back. Avery snatched the package before it could fall. There were plenty of older Slytherins in the room, but they just looked up without interest and went back to what they were doing. Some of them didn't even look up.

When Avery actually opened it, Evan noticed (and not just because Narcissa had kicked him and pointed) that Snape went a shade paler.

"Of course it's books," Avery said, resigned. They were second- or possibly fifth-hand books, too. "You're so _boring,_ Snape."

"What are they?" Mulciber asked.

"This one's…" Avery opened the massive volume close to the beginning, squinted at the tiny text, and read, "Like all other arts, the Science of, uh, something, is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study…" He shook his head in amazement, and opened his mouth.

"Congratulations," Snape preempted him dryly, "you can almost read. A new achievement?" Evan thought he looked inexplicably relieved, although he was doing a fairly good job of masking it with the sarcasm.

Mulciber casually wrenched his arms farther up his back until he made a choked noise. "What about the other one, Tim?"

Avery opened this one to the beginning, and read, "Dear Severus."

"That's _personal,_" Snape snarled, wrenching unsuccessfully against Mulciber's grip.

"Dear Severus," Avery repeated, louder, "if you can't read this at thirteen you're not trying. Mam. That's personal?" he echoed, his eyebrows raised.

"It's your birthday?" Evan asked quietly.

Snape spared him a sullen glance, and went back to trying to shake Mulciber off and burn Avery's face away with his eyes.

Avery skimmed, frowning, and said, "This isn't even English."

"No, you cretin," Snape snapped, finally breaking free and grabbing his books back. "It's Greek. We use it in spells, for god's sake, you should have a passing familiarity!"

"Is it a spellbook?" Mulciber asked, abruptly interested.

"_I haven't read it yet,_" he snarled. He threw himself into an armchair, silently daring them to bother him more now that his arms were free. They either didn't care to challenge him when he could reach his wand or were bored by his swotty presents. Hard to tell.

"Your mum sends you books in Greek for your birthday?" he asked in a low voice, since Snape's armchair was close enough for it.

"Xenophon," Snape said, as though this were self-explanatory and not a collection of meaningless syllables.

"What's the other one?"

He glanced at it, and looked uneasy. "It's a biography," he said.

"You," Evan told him, "are a terrible liar."

"Sorry to hear it."

Evan could see he wasn't getting more information out of him. And he didn't care enough to try. With a shrug, he turned back to the table.

Instead of Narcissa and Regulus both being studiously bored, as he'd expected, he saw a bored Regulus and a Narcissa who was furiously scribbling calculations on a fresh piece of paper. "Had a brainwave?" he asked her.

"Shh!"

"Right, then."

"Well!" Narcissa said, brightly and loudly, a minute or two later. "That explains everything!"

Everyone looked at her. "Yes?" Evan asked, trying to sound more curious than baffled. He didn't think he'd succeeded.

"Oh, yes!" she said, smiling. "Today is your birthday, Snape?"

"She's talking to me," Snape said blankly. "Why is she talking to me?"

"Is it?" Evan asked.

He sighed, aggravated. "Yes, fine, it's my birthday. Huzzah, applause, cake."

"You weren't, by chance," Narcissa asked hopefully, "a quite small baby?"

Evan didn't see what that could have to do with absolutely anything. It was, though, a reasonable assumption. Snape was pretty titchy now.

"Yes…?"

"Born a little early, maybe?" she asked, excitement mounting.

"A couple of weeks early, I understand," he said warily. "_Why?_"

"Snape!" she exclaimed, transported. "Were you a _Beltane baby?"_

"So the hell what?"

"Isn't it obvious?" she trilled, clasping her hands and rising from her chair in a transport of delight. Nobody else in the world, Evan was convinced, could have pulled it off without looking ridiculous.

"No," Snape said, staring at her as if she'd sprouted a second head.

"It isn't," Evan told her. "To anyone."

"You're all so _silly!" _she told the entire room. "Obviously it means Snape's mother jumped the fires with a wizard. The House is still all purebloods after all!"

There was a long silence wherein everyone stared at her some more. Then, "Funny, Black," Snape droned, and turned a page.

She stamped her foot, which even she was going to be too old to get away with soon. "It _isn't_ funny, it makes perfect sense! Snape's too good at magic to be a mudblood!"

"Thank you. Feel free to stop slandering my mother any time you like," Snape said, very quietly. He sounded utterly calm, and utterly unlike himself, and chills slammed down Evan's spine.

"Oh, don't be so _provincial,_ Snape," she said scornfully. "There's nothing wrong with it if it's at Beltane."

"I look like my father," he said, still very calmly. "Everyone says so."

"Everyone _would_ say so," she retorted with a little toss of her hair. "They wouldn't want to get your mum into trouble. Her husband's a muggle, so he might not understand about Beltane. And he'd see what he wanted to see!"

Snape tapped his beak with a finger and a sardonic expression. "Sorry. Wouldn't have picked it, but I come by it honestly."

"You're not the only person in the history of ever to have an enormous nose," she said with sterling diplomacy. "You look just like my great-grandfather Phineas. You can ask Professor Dumbledore to show you his portrait the next time you get dragged to his office. Anyway, it might be a glamour! There are stories about witches passing off their babies that way when their husbands were ignorant brutes!"

"My father," Snape said, closing his book very carefully, "is a metaphorical bastard. I am not a literal one."

"I told you, Snape," she said impatiently, "Beltane doesn't _count_."

Snape drew in a breath.

"Uh-oh," Regulus said in a small voice, and ducked under the table. Evan would have liked to join him, but it would be so undignified.

Ten minutes later Snape and Narcissa, both brick red, were still screaming at each other over the ruins of Reggie's History of Magic essay. Evan had been vaguely tempted to rescue the parchment for his only younger cousin, but Reggie needed to learn to protect what was important himself. He would have had to rewrite it anyway (Evan told himself, despite the unlikelihood of Reg actually doing it).

Someone had gotten a huge tub of popcorn for everyone from a house elf, and a good quarter of the House was clustered around it with improvised bowls. Evan thought he could see someone keeping score, and there were definitely bets making the rounds.

He felt rather glazed, and he could see Regulus clutching his knees and actually shaking a little down there where he'd trapped himself. There had just been _so much shouting._ Neither of the two had repeated themselves yet, or gone for their wands. It was impressive, really, but still: _so much shouting_. It was like visiting Reggie's house when Aunt Walburga and Sirius were fighting, and he didn't blame Reggie for cowering.

A few people had come in from the dormitories or the hall since the epic shrieking match had started. They'd all either turned smartly around, slunk carefully around the edges of the room on their way through, or found a chair and grabbed some popcorn.

That was only sense. No one had ever seen Narcissa lose her temper before, and she was a Black. Bella was going to be a Slytherin legend at least until Evan's year graduated, and probably long afterwards. Narcissa was not only her sister but still a relatively unknown quantity. Whereas _everyone_ had seen Snape lose his temper, and it was never pretty. It was good strategy to find out how Narcissa acted when she did her nut, but no one wanted to be part of this.

No one sane wanted to be a part of this.

Lockhart, on the other hand, paused in the doorway, taking in the situation with enormous blue eyes (use manganese blue with a hint of cobalt violet: an almost lilac effect). In contrast to everyone else's cautious or casual or even furtive interest, he looked eager, openly fascinated, and bouncy.

He headed for the popcorn. For a minute Evan had the mad thought that he was going to sensibly join the throng. As he should have (and really had) known, though, Lockhart (apart from that week he'd spent moping over Simmons), was… Lockhart.

Instead of taking popcorn, he grabbed the ladle and jumped on one of the other study tables. Go pieces went flying, and Evan winced. The kid was going to pay for that; it had been Montague and Greengrass's game. Greengrass was one of the sixth-year prefects. Montague was a fifth-year one and, frankly, just plain mean when crossed.

A moment later, he realized the crazy kid might not _survive_ to pay for that. Pretending the ladle was a microphone, Lockhart was excitedly yammering into it at top volume.

"Annnd Miss Black gets in a nasty crack about Snape's hair, nice one, Miss Black, but Snape goes in for a well-crafted insult to her intelligence! Oh, Miss Black is angry now! She's going for the comparing his ancestors to animals tactic, yes, yes, it's working, it's working, Snape is turning a very dark shade of red inDEED, we may have a stroke soon, folks! And they're taking a pause, taking a pause, gathering their resources for round two, no doubt! Observe the crrrrrackling eye contact, the perfect stare between duelist and duelist as they watch each other like hawks for the first attack—"

"GET OUT OF IT!" they both roared, their wands slashing out at him twice in perfect, beautiful synchronicity.

The silence that followed Lockhart's crash to the floor was just as perfect, colored only by the sound of a dozen pairs of eyebrows raising. Evan, as if from very far away, heard his own voice gush out in a strangled, "Where is my sketchpad, I want my sketchpad _right now_."

"Don't even think about it," Snape told him.

Then there was a snort. To everyone's surprise, it was Narcissa holding her hands over her delicate nose and rosebud mouth, failing miserably to hold back more little snorting noises. Seeing everyone look at her, she caught Snape's gaze and managed, in a very choked voice, a wand-like gesture and the word, "Swish!"

Snape's mouth twitched, and then trembled a little as he agreed, "Thump!"

They teetered on the edge of control for another second or two, and then they both collapsed into peals of undignified and rather hysterical laughter. It ended up in actual collapses, too, with them both sitting on the floor with their shoulders pressed together, cackling like maniacs.

"You people are insane," Evan told them affably, sitting down beside them with the remains of Reggie's essay. He started scribbling frantically all over the back of it. He'd do a more measured version later, but if the image escaped him before he'd captured the soul of it!

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reggie crawl out from under the table and make his way carefully over to Lockhart. "You alive, Gilderoy?" he asked. He sounded shaky, but more curious than worried.

"Nnng nnng nng nnnng ng nnng nnng!" Lockhart garbled frantically.

"Er… what?"

"NNNG NNG NNNNG NG NNNG NNNG!"

"Right, um, okay, let's get you to the Pomfrey, then—oh!"

"NNG? NNG?!"

"Er… your face is all over boils."

"NNNNNNNNNNNNNN!"

"…Can you stand up like that? I mean, with all the… the toenails and everything? I s'pose we could try to clip some of it off… No, don't thrash about, they're all around your ankles— Oh, good, now you're bleeding on the carpet, well done."

Snape and Narcissa folded over in renewed fits of helpless laughter that lasted well past the time when everyone else had shaken their heads and wandered off. There was a general air of disgruntlement; everyone had been too morbidly captivated by the suicidal Lockhart to place new bets in time. Evan shook his head, too, but stayed put and went on drawing.

Malfoy came in, looking as though he were trying to run and seem casual at the same time. Someone, Evan thought, had probably told him the common room had turned into Armageddon. He blinked, and his pale hair settled around his shoulders. He had lipstick on his pointy chin.

"Everything all right in here, I trust?" he asked, looking around with a frown. Despite what the common room had been like mere minutes ago, nothing was out of place but Montague's go game and a few stray buttery kernels.

And Reggie's essay. But he'd been making a pig's ear of it anyway, so no real loss there.

"Everything's lovely, thank you, Malfoy," Narcissa told him. Her attempt at sweetness was completely spoiled by the giggles. "Snape's mum is pure as the driven snow."

"My halfblooded excellence at magic, which it was perceptive and charming of Black to acknowledge, is an unaccountable and probably unique freak of nature," Snape told Malfoy solemnly, with wide, innocent eyes that looked unutterably wrong on him.

Evan could see that neither of them believed a word they'd said. And Snape had used quite a lot of words. This delicacy, he thought, was cause for cautious optimism about a peaceable future.

It also provided evidence that Snape's mum, despite the way she dressed him and her marriage to a muggle, might not have proven herself _completely_ off her head by giving him a present like that. Not that Ev hadn't known he was hopelessly swotty already, but he'd thought up until now it might just be due to a lack of friends and hobbies.

Malfoy stared at them both, and turned to Evan. "Lance?"

"They're both insane," Evan told him. The appeal to him as a Responsible Young Man With A Slytherin Name Given To Him By Malfoy wasn't lost on him, but it was all just too complicated to explain. "I think you had to be there."

Malfoy scowled down his thin nose, and demanded, "If the ceiling is not, in fact, coming down, then why, exactly, have I been pulled away from my da—my Astronomy revision?

They all looked at each other, and back up at Malfoy. As one, they chorused, "Lockhart."

"Right," Malfoy declared stonily. Turning vengefully on his heel in a swirl of black and platinum, he strode out.

"That was easy," noted a bemused Snape.

Evan plotted more pictures. Charcoal, maybe; it wasn't as if Snape had any color to him anyway. He'd heard his father talk about people whose faces looked different with every expression, but he'd thought it was an exaggeration. And Snape's nose was so distinctive; Evan would have thought he'd be the last person to have a changeable face. Apparently not.

"I'm a Black," Narcissa told him. "Evan is too, really. He'd believe us even if he didn't believe us."

"Convenient."

"It is!" she beamed.

"Want to see what you looked like?" Evan asked them, holding up his drawing.

"I don't look like that!" they chorused indignantly.

Evan looked at them with resignation. Leave it to Lockhart to create a two-headed monster (1) by falling off a table.

"How would you know?" Narcissa demanded, looking at Snape critically. "Do you even own a mirror?"

"I think there's one in the bathroom?" Snape wondered vaguely. Which was nonsense and possibly even a joke, because you really couldn't miss it if you ever washed your hands or face. Snape's quills were obviously home-made and had a tendency to sputter all over him, and yet he did not go around looking like a Dalmatian. So.

Still, the reminder that there was that very prominent difference between them was welcome. Evan sighed with relief, and they looked at him. "Not a hydra," he said mysteriously.

Only, apparently, it wasn't as mysterious as all that. Looking like he expected to be punched for getting above himself but was reminding himself that Slytherin was ambition as well as (un)common sense, Snape suggested, "Chimera?"

"Cerberus," Narcissa decided the fate of the alliance decisively, and gave Evan a peck on the cheek. Then, with an expression of candied evil, she gave an appalled and petrified Snape one, too.

It was then that Reggie came back, thankfully minus Lockhart. "Severus, Madam Pomfrey wants to know what you…" His voice died out as he a good look at them, at two Black scions sprawled all over the floor with a mill-shrew, at the wicked sparkle his immaculate princess of a cousin was wearing as she pulled away from the paralyzed face of a boy who'd return fire in front of a teacher. "Did," he finished on a squeak, and abandoned his homework again in favor of sensibly fleeing in terror.

"Don't look at me like that," Snape said as he stood up to go illuminate the mediwitch, clearly-deliberately misunderstanding Evan's look of also wanting to know. "_I'm_ not kissing you."

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Art at AO3 (link in profile):

_1. It's your birthday?  
2: Evan would have liked to join him under the table, but it would be so undignified._

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1) On Severus's next birthday, his mum (2) gave him battered and bilingual editions of _The Canterbury Tales_ and _The Art of War_. (3) The latter had a yin-yang on the cover. Everyone but Narcissa got tired of Evan's new obsession very, very quickly (although since Severus tolerated it with strained patience, he was probably secretly pleased).

2) His dreadful father sent him a book called _I, Robot_, which he obviously-lied was a collection of essays about magical automatons like the ones the Headmaster had in his office.

3) With, according to the note on the inside cover, deep reservations, and probably only because Severus had done the silent, yearning, all-hope-abandoned-before-it-started eye-thing he did when anyone else would have begged and whined. Or at least _said_ something. Evan suspected Mrs. Snape of telepathy. Also of literary sadism. Meeting her did not change his mind on either count.


	4. September, 1973: Third Year

Severus pulls a Hermione. Only with less class.

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**Warnings** for off-screen abusive parenting and for Marauders from the Slytherin POV.

Let it be noted right now that MWPP won't come off any better in this story than Draco does in HP. This is in both cases due to narrator bias, not author hate (I assume it's in both cases; can't speak for JKR). That will hold true for the parts of the arc that deal with the Hogwarts years, but not the war years.

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**_September, 1973: Third Year_**

At the Sorting feast, some of Evan's Gryffindor yearmates (all the male ones) and a few others hissed when the first of the tiny eleven-year-olds was sorted serpentine. The Slytherin table saved the situation by instantly adding hissing to their own clapping.

This was one of Severus and Narcissa's disturbing shared-brain moments. Even though they weren't sitting anywhere near each other. A good third of the House always wanted to sit next to Narcissa and her cousins, and Severus never wanted to have that particular fight in public. Evan thought in some concern that tonight he might be avoiding getting elbowed and stepped on rather than being politic; he was moving rather stiffly. The separation meant that the hissing wasn't spreading from only one place at the long table, at least, which looked better.

The older Slytherins apparently knew some ventriloquism charms. Before long, the Ravenclaws' applause was accompanied by all sorts of bird calls and the Gryffindors' by purring noises. Evan wondered whether the manebrains realized this was an insult: it was pussycats that purred, not lions. The Hufflepuffs caught on quickly, and started trying to do badger-barks all on their own. They weren't accurate, but they had enthusiasm.

So the Sorting ended up being unusually energetic, the first-years were delighted, and Dumbledore smiled benignly down on them all. No one between the ages of twelve and eighteen was fooled (except Lockhart. And possibly Avery, or maybe he just didn't care. Hard to tell, with Avery).

"That was vile," Severus spat once the new baby snakes had settled into their two dormitories. Evan was amazed he'd held it in that long; he'd been white with fury all evening. Evan had some fruit and a rough-hewn sandwich tied up in a napkin waiting for him to settle down. He'd seen Narcissa force Severus to eat when he was this upset before; it hadn't gone well. To put it mildly.

"Yes, it was," said Greengrass, who was their lead prefect this year. "And it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't let those Gryffie twits provoke you into ramping up the enmity with them constantly for the last two years, Snape. So what was it you wanted to say?"

"Bullies have no responsibility for bullying if someone doesn't lie down in front of them to be stomped on?" Severus demanded, incredulous.

"Of course they do," said Greengrass impatiently. "But if you choose to keep open warfare running, don't be surprised when open warfare is what you keep getting."

"That—" Severus started, jumping up with fire in his eyes. To Evan's mixed startled fear and profound relief (the idiot had attacked older Slytherins before), he instantly went even whiter, and swimmy-eyed, and collapsed.

"Huh," said Greengrass after a moment. He prodded Severus with a toe, and got a choked noise. "Already fighting on the train?"

"Not so's you'd notice," Evan said, trying to uncurl his friend with careful hands. Severus had taken a strangely long time about his trip to the loo, but he hadn't come back looking either upset or different.

"Better take him up to the infirmary, then. You too, Black," he added to Regulus, although it was Narcissa who stood. "I don't want to start the year off with an ambush. And see if you can't do something about him, will you?" He was still addressing them, but now he was including the room at large. "Malfoy may have gotten a head rush out of swooping around managing the lower years, but Trish and I are going to be displeased with anyone whose misbehavior or incompetence steals time from our NEWT studies."

"Too right," said Patrice Jigger, sweeping them all with a look of pure ice.

"I can look after myself," Severus snarled, which was good coming from someone who couldn't seem to straighten out, let alone stand up.

Evan put a hand over his mouth, and Severus didn't quite dare to bite him. "Anyone know the stretcher-spell yet?"

As they pushed Severus out on Jigger's mobilicorpus, Evan heard her comment, "Spiky little idiot. Are we sure he's Slytherin?"

"Hmm," Ev commented on their way out of the dungeons. "Spiky. Suits him, coz, don't you think?"

"What?" asked Severus weakly. "No."

"Oh, Evvie, don't tease when he can't stand up!" Narcissa protested, helping to angle Severus up the stairs. Evan assumed this would have been good advice if either Ev or the person on the stretcher had been a girl. Severus would take cosseting from another wizard as an insult, and for once his umbrage would be normal. "Don't mind him, darling."

"Ugh," Severus said, managing a piece of a smile to keep her from taking offense. "When did you start calling people that?"

"Quite, Narcissa," Evan said winsomely, "can't you see he prefers Spike?" Severus sighed and turned away. "What happened to you, anyway?"

"Nothing," he said.

And 'nothing' was what they got for all their questioning, and 'nothing' was what Madame Pomfrey got, too, for nearly ten minutes. Finally, she lost her patience and told him that 'nothing' never gave anyone broken ribs or internal bruising. And if he'd thought it was 'nothing,' then why was his entire torso one giant, tightly-wrapped poultice?

He bit off, "I fell out of a tree. Onto a large rock. I'm terribly embarrassed about it and had hoped not to go into detail, thank you very much."

"You are the worst liar on the face of the planet," Evan told him when she was off fetching an Infirmary gown. Apparently Severus was going to be stuck there for the night. "I hope you know she's only going along with it because she's too polite to actually tell you she doesn't believe you."

"I'll take it," Severus said, closing his eyes.

"Was it _them_?" Narcissa asked. He shook his head, and she and Evan frowned at each other. Clearly there'd been nothing in his replies to her owls to give them a hint, either.

They could see the Pomfrey coming back, though, so she just gave him a kiss on the forehead (after getting his hair out of the way. It was always in dreadful shape his first day back, even for him, and she had limits).

Evan squeezed his shoulder. "Nab you the bed by the door?" By this point in the evening that might require a certain amount of maneuvering, but Severus was always much easier to deal with when he didn't feel trapped. His hackles went up when he did, and then everybody was intensely sorry. Sadly, Avery had not yet made this connection, and Mulciber thought it was funny enough to be worth it.

Severus had just about gotten a nod in before the gown was shoved at him and they were being bustled out. Evan paused at the door to call back an innocent, "Good night, Spike."

"Yes, good night, darling!" Narcissa trilled.

"Argh," Severus sighed, jamming the heels of his hands into his eyes, and then the Pomfrey closed the door on them.

Things were quiet for the first few weeks of term—which was to say that Severus got into only the usual scuffles, and seemed to be doing his best not to turn any of them into the second Grindelwald War. There was something in the air, though.

Evan didn't so much fail to put a finger on the problem as stick one in each ear and hum loudly, but he had a depressed feeling he wasn't going to be able to succeed for long. Severus was getting so steamed up he was never quite sitting still. He looked angry, rather than hunted. Evan wasn't actually complaining about this, as it meant that absolutely nobody bothered them when they were trying to study. Or when he was studying and Evan was sketching. Still, it didn't bode well.

He hoped, for a while, that it could be blamed on the Demon Elective. Although he and Narcissa had opted for the sensible and dignified minimum of two new classes, Severus (not unpredictably) had gone for three.

There had never been any question that they were all going to take Runes together, although it ended up not being quite so 'together' as they'd expected: they shared the class with Gryffindor. Therefore, Severus had to partner up with Evans, just as in potions, to keep her boorish Housemates from making the class a complete misery for everyone every time. No one but Severus and Evans was pleased about this, but (much to Slytherin's surprise, especially Narcissa's) she seemed to be able to keep up with him easily.

Apart from that, he 'compromised' on Divination with Narcissa and Care of Magical Creatures with the Hufflepuffs, if you could call that a compromise. He wouldn't listen to anybody who told him that Creature Care was a brain-dead class with a lot of anatomical drawing, saying that not being able to deal with magical animals left one vulnerable to price-gouging when collecting ingredients.

No one but Mulciber was crass enough to challenge out loud his assertion that his objection to price-gouging was philosophical, but everyone was thinking it.

Narcissa had succeeded in convincing him that someone who got attacked as often as he did really _ought_ to take Divination. He'd said that he knew perfectly well when he was going to be attacked: every time he stuck his head out of the dungeons. Nevertheless, she'd argued (not to say nagged) until he'd given in.

Evan suspected her persistence had had marginally less to do with not wanting to be stuck partnered with any of her roommates (Wilkes was, er, odd, and the other three were on the silly side) than with being afraid Severus would come back from Creature Care smelling like a stable. Warned, Severus still insisted on taking the class, but was very careful about cleaning up afterwards. The spell he used did a number on his hair, but it wasn't as though it was ever exactly cooperative in the first place.

So he did take Divi with Narcissa, but it was not going well. Professor Imago had started them off with a brief survey of every kind of fortune-telling there was, from alectromancy to tasseography, and told them which they'd be studying in which years—as well as which they'd never be studying because Hogwarts was not in the custom of sacrificing animals or communicating with the dead. Oh, er, school residents excepted of course, Friar, everything all right, then? Just passing through? Fine, fine.

It wasn't the squeamishness that had upset Severus, though. Being him, he'd taken the survey _very seriously_ and tried to memorize the symbols that surely would be common to the methods like tea-reading and fire-gazing and crystal balls and what did Professor Imago MEAN they had very little in the way of common imagery?!

And then he'd read up on rune-casting and tarot and the I Ching and dream-reading and palmistry and Evan was surprised the tower hadn't blown up with the sheer force of his outrage. Narcissa had declared it a very near thing. Their Spike had very little patience for fuzzy intuition unless it was Evan's or Evans's, and absolutely none for letting a subject that relied so heavily on misty interpretation eat up his study hours.

Dropping the class hadn't been a problem, but convincing the Arithmancy Master and the Deputy Head (and, by extension, Dumbledore) to let him join Evan's class had been a real gauntlet. Distraught babbling at Slughorn had won his support, but Digitalin and McGonagall were both strict sorts, and more was needed.

So there had been formal pleas and demonstrations that he knew basic mathematics, which would have been more of a question if he'd been home-schooled like most purebloods. He'd had the humiliating task of getting written confirmation from his other teachers that he was really quite a good student in classes that weren't Transfiguration, as if she couldn't have just asked them.

Evan had even stayed after class once to remind her that Severus did well on her essays, which dealt with concrete theory. He'd tried to explain to her that it was just the part about picturing what he wanted on the premise that he could get it that gave him trouble.

She'd given him a very odd look. Evan had therefore switched tactics and told her Severus just wasn't a visual person. This had not stopped her looking at him funny, but he thought he'd made an impression.

* * *

Art at AO3; link in profile

* * *

In the end, Digitalin had said that if and when Severus caught up with the rest of the class, he could join in. By cutting out all Severus's nonessential reading and most of his tutoring, much of Evan's drawing time, and quite a lot of Narcissa's patience, they got him up to speed by mid-October. Since the class was mostly Ravenclaw, no one kicked up much of a fuss about it. They understood.

Severus was initially a much happier person for being settled in a class he could get his teeth into. A few days before Halloween, however, that sense that something was indefinably wrong and making him furious was back.

Evan was still trying not to know. He'd thoroughly earned getting his art hours back, damn it, and although he was thrilled to have made reserve Seeker, practice did eat a lot of his time. Despite his best efforts, though, he couldn't quite help noticing that a lot of Spike's simmering unhappiness was connected somehow with the first-years.

No longer having to tutor Severus (thank Merlin; tutoring him was worse than letting him correct an essay, and _no one had thought that was possible_) left him also noticing that Narcissa wasn't speaking to them. That took a few days and a lot of maneuvering to fix. She was a lot more stubborn than she looked, and all Evan's charm didn't wear her down.

He liked to think he'd prepared the ground, though. Certainly he'd worked hard enough at it. So when her cool silence was brought to Spike's attention and he babbled all over himself, penitently deploring his self-centered obliviousness and promising to rescue her from the horrors of Divi too, she took pity.

Severus couldn't understand why she was happy in a class she considered to be largely an excuse to gossip and drink tea, even when Evan privately showed him 'sinecure' in the dictionary. She forgave Severus for that denseness, too, and he (in a suspicious sort of way) accepted their assurances that his avid swottishness was _not normal_ and most people _liked_ easy classes, especially when they had eight other mostly-challenging courseloads to juggle.

Oddly, he never seemed to work out that Narcissa regarded the gossiping and the seeing-what-people-reacted-to parts of it with deadly seriousness. Evan found Severus's deeply-impressed reaction to her 'natural' people skills—which she did have a talent for, yes, but also honed and practiced with as much devotion as he gave to Defense—unendingly hilarious.

And yet, not hilariously, when they'd settled things with her again, it barely took any time at all before he was back to brooding with narrow eyes over the first-years.


	5. Halloween, 1973: Third Year

**Warnings** for language. Also for thirteen-year-olds entering adolescence, some more quickly than others.

* * *

**_Halloween, 1973: Third Year_**

"What's Spike in a froth about now?" Reggie asked. He'd been the first to pick up the nickname, which made him seem familiar with the older student who had the _most_ reputation in the House, if not (nothing like) the _best_. That was his story, anyway. Evan suspected the truth had a lot more to do with ostentatiously siding with Narcissa and his parents over Siri.

If he'd been anyone else, this passive-aggressive needling of the Gryffindors would have gotten Reggie into a lot of trouble. As matters stood, it was just Severus who pulled down extra helpings of Sirius's very loud wrath. He seemed to feel Reggie was worth it, though.

Evan had to agree. He even agreed that Reggie was worth it because he was was a nice kid with a nightmare for a brother and needed looking-after. For someone in Severus' position, though, that was sort of the wrong reason. If he'd stuck with Reggie because he was _Regulus Black_, Slytherin would have despaired less of his erratic intelligence.

"If you find out," Evan said firmly, "for Salazar's sake don't tell me."

Inevitably, though, the tragic day came when he could no longer live in his beloved ignorance.

It probably wasn't actually a coincidence that the day was Halloween. Evan actually did want to find out whose decision it had been to get clever with a feast day dominated by autumn-and-night colors and chiaroscuro. He thought he might have a word about their lamentable lack of taste with Slughorn, or maybe his mum.

Narcissa said that was a bit extreme and he should let her scuttle their immediate romantic prospects instead of doing in their entire career. Evan, very genteelly, sulked. She just didn't understand about pumpkin carving.

It had seemed at first like another, like a perfect Halloween feast. The pumpkins glowed when they weren't full of sweets, the toffee apples swooped cheerfully, the streamers against the enchanted ceiling's night skyscape swam like veins of gold, all as anticipated.

The ghosts' formation flying was excellent, too. Evan and Narcissa both liked this part, and this year they'd made sure to sit away from everyone they knew in order to watch in peace. None of their yearmates had any appreciation or even patience for choreography. Last year Evan had gotten something treacly very firmly tangled into his hair, presumably because Mulciber got bored easily.

At least, Severus might or might not appreciate the ghosts. They hadn't been friends last October, so Evan didn't know for sure. It didn't seem like his sort of thing, though. They weren't going to find out through a practical demonstration this year, either; he was off at the other end of the table as usual.

He tended to stay away from their Evan and Narcissa when there were lions around, and pick a seat near the door instead one that would let him hear the High Table. Usually, he shadowed Avery, Mulciber and, at a pinch, Wilkes. Their roommates, he explained to Evan when asked, deserved whatever Gryffish nonsense being seen with him would attract, while Wilkes rather enjoyed flustering the louts and was too little for them to feel good about menacing.

At meals, he tended to end up surrounded by younger boys. They mostly ignored each other, although Lockhart wasn't good at taking social cues. And while Reggie didn't try to talk to him much at meals, either, the silence between them was a comfortable one, not dismissive.

This year's entertainment was a Welsh vampire whose band of skeletons distracted, in Evan's opinion, from what was a reasonably respectable baritone. It wasn't the best Evan had ever sat through, but it was a decent show. The problems didn't start until Dumbledore had said his few words.

Actually he'd just snapped the fingers of both hands twice in a rhythmic sort of way, but a lot of the muggleborns had laughed. It wasn't more incomprehensible than his usual nonsense, Evan supposed.

Then they'd settled to their food and there had been a great wailing and a gnashing of teeth. Literally: someone had cast a _duro_ on the toffee apples. A few of the more enthusiastic little kids, still enthralled by the absence of parents-and-elves telling them Vegetables Before Sweets, had experienced some dental chipping. Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, mostly, which was odd. Evan would have expected more Gryffindors to be affected by something like that.

The headmaster had taken care of that easily enough. He'd regained order easily when the eerily-lit air-swimming water-snakes had turned and started attacking the Slytherins, too. Slughorn had made a loudly proud comment about how quick his children were with their shielding charms, see, hardly any of them were particularly wet! This had saved Slytherin enough face that Evan had hoped they might get through the evening intact.

That was when slimy green things with great flapping bat wings had fought their way out of the screaming first-years' noses and started attacking them. Just at their table, of course.

And _that_ was when Spike's half of the table froze solid and the Gryffindor table caught fire like it had been soaked in oil.

Nothing would put it out, either. It blazed furiously, taking the manebrains' dinner with it, until Lockhart turned excitedly to Severus and started chattering about wasn't this EXCITING, and he knew a really excellent fire-extinguishing spell, just let him find his wand—

"_No_," Spike barked, chopping his wrist down to the icy table and holding it there. This was everyone's habitual reaction when Lockhart went for his wand. Anyone would have done the same, even if they'd just stepped on a mousetrap and been doused in hot treacle. It was pure survival instinct. It didn't imply in any way that he'd actually heard a word the idiot had said.

Reports later said that before Lockhart had gotten his attention, he'd been frozen as solid as the ice, with a very blank face turned to the Gryff table. It hadn't taken more than a moment after he'd stopped looking so blank before the ice started to retreat and the teachers were able to get the flames under control.

The elves replaced the ruined food in a twinkling, but the mood in the Hall was dreadful.

Severus, Lockhart, and the four Usual Suspects from the other house were investigated first, of course. Their claims not to have cast any spells or used any potions or anything held up under sneakoscope and secrecy sensor examination, and priori incantatum proved all their wands innocent.

Severus said afterwards that he thought no one but Sprout actually believed he'd had nothing to do with it. McGonagall certainly didn't, and had been inclined to press, but Dumbledore had waved her off at that point.

His only explanation was that Dumbledore didn't think people could be blamed for their accidental magic, but he seemed confident about it. He said Dumbledore had had a sort of sad, nostalgic look. When he'd been sent out, he said, the headmaster had given him a melancholy sort of pat on the shoulder. He'd also gotten a glower from the Tartan, a wink from Flitwick, and a disturbing, heavy-lidded, contemplative look from Slughorn.

On November First, Severus snuck out of History of Magic. He showed up for Charms looking displeased and grim and a little melancholy himself, but steadier than Evan had seen him all year.

Evans came storming up to him on the way to supper, Lupin dragged cringing in her wake, clutching a white handkerchief like it was his only hope (it was). "Severus Snape," she yelled, "I cannot believe you! You—"

"You tell them," Spike told Lupin coldly, cutting right over her, "that if they enlist an army to enlarge the war, their troops become fair game."

Evans shut up, and turned a slowly irate is-this-true look on Lupin.

"And now," Spike went on with continued icy contempt, "their little protégées have the first inkling what they'd be getting into. Just the first. Did any of them need the Pomfrey? They did not. There was no pain and no damage, and nothing hands or a finite couldn't end. I was _gentle_. No one with less judgment involved. But now they know. As far as I'm concerned, they can make their own choices."

"I—" Lupin started. Evan almost felt sorry for him. His position was _terrible,_ with Evans as a friend and Potter as a protector.

Severus took one very fast, very long step towards him, just one. Their eyes were locked. Evan felt Wilkes clutching excitedly at his arm, and was a little distracted by her quick breaths. She was turning out to be what Ev's mum called an early bloomer.

"I'm gentle with _you_, Lupin," Severus said, almost crooning, with a dreadful, dead-eyed smile. "Sportsmanlike, aren't we all? But I suggest," he continued to smile, but his lips pulled away from his teeth, "I really do suggest, Lupin, that you _keep your fucking poison off the infants_. It's just not right," he went on, gently chiding, the sudden snarl swallowed by silky hypnosis again. "Don't you think? I might get jealous, sharing your attentions. Not the thing at all."

"I—right," Lupin said hastily, grabbing Evans's arm and trying to back away. "I'll just, uh, pass that _come on, Lily!_"

"Not really?" Evans asked Spike, bubbling with distress like a volcano not sure where to aim. "Really, Sev?"

Severus just stared flatly at her. It was an exasperated stare, though, the kind of what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you look he himself got so often, not the seething fury he'd been bending on Lupin.

Her nostrils flared. "Right," she said, far more decisively than Lupin had. Then she was dragging her housemate again, this time in the opposite direction. He no longer looked like any direction that meant away was a good one.

When Spike turned and saw them all staring at him (it was at this point that Evan became aware that Wilkes had crushed herself so avidly against him that they were nearly fused, and that she smelled like crushed strawberries and fresh thyme and it was rather nice), he hunched his shoulders and ducked under his hair. He skittered for his usual seat in a defensive dive and slammed his Transfigurations text between himself and the rest of the school, for all the world as if he were the friendless scarecrow he'd been in first year.

Avery, Mulciber, Bast Lestrange, and Thor Rowle were busy yahing at Lupin's back, but Regulus caught Evan's gaze. His silvery eyes were very wide. Evan was just feeling thoughtful, himself, but whatever showed on his face seemed to reassure Reggie.

Reg went to sit next to Spike, making something of a production of it. He wisely didn't try to talk to Severus, who looked likely to bite heads off out of sheer embarrassment, just sat and ate. His presence probably stopped his brother from setting off a sequel in the heat of the indignation (or humiliation, if he was smart enough; hard to say with Siri at any given moment). Evan was proud of him.

He caught Narcissa's eye next. They exchanged a meaningful look before Narcissa's gaze slid south a bit and her eyebrow went up.

Thus prompted, he became aware of Wilkes again, and suddenly wondered how he'd managed to forget she was there even for a second. "Are you purring?" he asked, bemused.

"Aren't you?" she countered with a wide, sparkling grin.

It was Greengrass who cleared his throat that night in the common room. No one was surprised either that it was happening or that it was him doing it. It was common knowledge that Jigger had gotten her badge largely because Slughorn was in business with her grandfather. It wasn't a responsibility she particularly seemed to want.

"The snake that gives two warnings and makes itself a target twice," Greengrass addressed the ceiling for only the second time that year, "is the elapid called the black-and-white spitting cobra, _Naja siamensis_. The same snake will retreat at some times of day, but is quick to strike at others. It first stands and flares its hood, and then spits a painful, blinding venom. If the attack continues, this cobra will not only strike but will hold fast to his victim and chew like a rabid terrier."

Severus, who had clearly not been paying attention, slowly seemed to realize that everyone was looking at him. Greengrass sounded like he was barely managing not to laugh as he patiently went through it again.

There was a moment when Severus still seemed not to quite understand. Then his chest tried to dive through his backbone and he changed color twice. Grabbing his bookbag, he strode off towards their dormitory and his bed at very nearly a run.

"Retreats at some times of day," Greengrass repeated, still amused.

"Mental," Avery opined, shaking his head.

"Mental," Evan agreed, nearly melted with fondness. He gathered his own things and ambled after his definitely mental friend.

Severus's bed-curtains were drawn, but Evan came through anyway and sat down peaceably next to him. "It's a good thing," he said.

"I don't _want_ to be a spectacle," Severus grieved. He'd been curled up on himself, with his eyes jammed into his knees and his arms wrapped around his ears.

"I know," Evan soothed, pulling him onto his shoulder. He did a very quiet double-take as his hand hit hair.

He'd been prepared to endure the greasy-looking mess for friendship's sake, but it didn't feel nasty. It felt like dry water, nearly as fine as cat fur. No wonder it was in a constant pendulum-swing between wilt and frizz.

It didn't smell bad, either, which was less of a surprise. He knew perfectly well that Severus washed every morning—with an expression of dark glee for the first few weeks of term, and a sort of melancholy look in the last few—and usually again after a skirmish or Potions class. It did smell, though: an herbal, woodsy smell, stronger than shampoo. Nice. Whatever Wilkes had been wearing had made Evan think _edible_; this was a tugging hook in his middle, in his arms and fingers, a buzz of gravity at his mouth.

"I know," he said again, resting his cheek on the dark head—only partly from fascination. Spike sounded so _beaten_ for someone who'd just been accepted and honored against odds like a Great Wall of China made out of smooth and sloping diamond. "You can't help it."

"It's just, she was yelling at me, and she wasn't going to be reasonable about volume or venue, I know her. And there he was, and… I mean, of all of them, he's the only one that might have _listened, _so I thought…"

"Carpe diem." Severus nodded against him. "And well carped it was."

"I didn't mean to make a scene."

Evan frowned. Severus was really upset, if he wasn't taking the opportunity to tell Ev _that's not what carped means_. "It's all right. You're not dull or average, Spike; people are going to notice you sometimes."

"Especially if I…" he made a glum exploding motion.

"You need to get that under control," Evan acknowledged. Severus believed compliments more easily when they were tempered with accurate criticism. "But it's not an always-bad, Spike. Slytherin's about doing what works well. If that's what works for you, then just get better at it, that's all. You're not going to be slick, ever—"

"That would be you."

Evan ignored that as silly. He wasn't slick, he just saw no reason to make things harder than they had to be. "You're not going to be a Narcissa or a Slughorn or a Phineas Nigellus, and that's fine. Greengrass is right: you're a cobra kind of Slytherin. If you've got more explode and snap in you than most, then work on your timing and your aim, that's all."

"And more gobbing," Severus muttered, "apparently."

"And bigger stones, maybe?" Evan suggested lightly, and got an unwilling curve of Severus's mouth. "Our black knight, could be?"

"Right, me Black. Antecedents? Check, mate."

"You never know. Some of the ancestors got around. Either way, Slytherin told you tonight we're glad to have you. People forget looking out for our own's part of us. The ambition and the cunning are worthless if they're not for fealty and family; people forget that. We shouldn't let them. We can be so subtle that people forget who we are. We forget sometimes, even. Sometimes we need someone shouty. Recognition isn't always mockery, you know."

"Yes, it is."

"Nope." He gave the bony shoulders a squeeze. "Chin up, Spike. It's a good thing, honestly."

Severus sighed, depressed, and drooped on him. After a while, with enough humor in his voice to mostly stop Ev worrying about him, he commented, "I don't think I've ever heard you talk that much at once. Ever."

"I didn't say you aren't trouble."

"On which subject," Severus said, gloomy again, "it's going to be worse now. They're not going to like the idea I've been holding back. Even if Lupin has the sense not to tell them I said that, I'd bet you anything Evans has thrown it at Potter already."

Evan made a face. She did seem the type. "Have you been?"

"Of course," Spike said, looking at him funny. "It's leagues easier to kill someone than get away with it."

"Is it?" Ev grinned. "How do you know?"

"I'm good at magic? And anatomy? And herblore? And read books? And have a brain?"

"Dull," he lamented, still smiling, "I had hoped for stories of thrilling chases across the moors."

"I'll lend you my Doyle. Or Evans's Bronte."

"Stories, Spike, not additional brick-thick reading material."

"Don't knock it, Slick, they're picturesque."

"Mm." To discourage both the name and Severus's terrier-like qualities, he changed the subject. "I'll bet _you_ Sluggy'll invite you to the club," he suggested, giving Spike a little shoulder-shove and summoning their Astronomy texts. If Spike was going to hide for the rest of the evening (or the week, which might be the smart move if he was right about Evans), they might as well get some work done. "He's been _evaluating_ you since the fire. Talking of spectacles."

"Oh, god. Surely not. Didn't you say Potter and Black go?"

"And Lupin, sometimes. And Evans," Evan confirmed. "I think he'd reschedule a meeting for Evans."

"Oh, god. Can I say no?"

"Not really advisable, baa-lamb." Nobody else in the world would even have asked, Evan was convinced. Even with enemies there. A few extra peaceful evenings a term was _not_ worth turning down Slughorn's sponsorship.

"Christ. It'd be World War Three. Surely he's got more sense than that."

It turned out Slughorn didn't. He had a system, he stuck to it.

After the second attempt, though, if possible more disastrous than the first, he showed himself capable of flexibility. Severus got permission to spend club nights earning extra credit for prepping Sluggy's class ingredients and making increasingly difficult potions for the Infirmary stores. Most of his detentions, too, although of course he didn't get extra credit for those.

It was in Transfigurations that he needed the extra help, not potions. He seemed more peaceful on those nights, so nobody pointed this out to Slughorn. Sluggy would probably have 'forgotten' at the first opportunity anyway; he was a lazy old thing.

Narcissa did point it out to Severus. He said, "It's not class credit I'm making up, it's Slug credit."

"Evan, darling, look!" Narcissa exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "He's learning!"

"Oh, shut up," Severus groused, but Evan caught a hint of a smile under his hair.

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Art at AO3

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If you thought it was a tribute, you're probably right.


	6. September, 1974: Fourth Year

Severus embarks on a lucrative career and is forced, practically at knifepoint, into a pointless display of good manners that surely couldn't possibly in any way have any sort of serious effect on his future...

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**_September, 1974: Fourth Year_**

"You're not really writing letters," Severus posited idly.

He was, in fact, nothing like idle. He had six knives peeling a small mountain of fruit and potatoes (1), an alarming amount of honey (2) warming in as many cauldrons as he'd been able to borrow, and nobody could get into their year's bathroom because of all the herbs (3) washing themselves in there. There were no objections, however, because apparently this was all going to lead to Alcohol For Sale (to Slytherins at a discount).

He was also doing a translation set for Runes and, quite possibly without even meaning to, thoroughly intimidating Reggie and everyone in the common room under the age of sixteen who wasn't named Lestrange.

Evan and Narcissa looked up, Evan with a smile. Summer in Italy had been an unceasing ravishment of color, light, shadow, and music, but it had been disconcerting to keep turning around to be brought back to earth by the cynical pragmatism of someone who wasn't actually there. "Why are we not really writing letters?" Narcissa asked curiously.

"Nobody could possibly have that many people to write to," Severus explained.

A lot of the better-blooded kids suddenly looked a lot less intimidated. Evan slid a dry look around the room, and their disillusionment transformed into uncertainty. Much better.

"You should be writing to some of them, too," Narcissa scolded.

"Like who?" asked a very skeptical Severus.

"Like Jigger! She didn't torment your life out last year, so you should write her and tell her…" She faltered, foundering on the rocks of what would be polite but not ridiculous coming from Spike.

"It's not the same without her," Evan suggested.

"Yes!" she beamed at him, bouncing a little. Evan tried not to look. She was his first cousin and his closest one, practically a sister. "Tell her that."

"It more or less is the same without her," Severus pointed out.

Narcissa ignored him. "And Greengrass, he liked you."

"He thought I was marginally more entertaining than his History revision."

"Exactly! Or Malfoy, you should have been writing to him all along."

"Oh, for—"

"You come here right now," Narcissa informed him. It wasn't anything so uncertain as a command. After a hopeful but ultimately disappointed check to see if she was kidding, Severus dragged his feet over to their table. The rhythm of the knives took on a funereal beat. "Don't be _silly,_ darling," she scolded, and thrust a quill into his hand. "I'm writing Malfoy now. Do a note and I'll send them together."

Severus looked hopelessly at Ev. Not unkindly, he said, "Civilized people keep in touch, Spike."

"Bah," he said grumpily, and stared at the parchment for a minute before starting to write. When he was done, Evan snagged it, ignoring the token _oi!_

_Hullo, Malfoy._

_Rosier says civilized people write to each other, so I don't know why he thinks I ought to try it. _

Evan choked.

_Having been given the competing impressions that it's the done thing to assure a past Prefect that their successors are dreadful, terrible, not a patch on them, and that it's not done to badmouth anyone who's given one an honorific, the proper course evades me. Slytherin did not fall to fire and plague under Greengrass, nor did the castle explode. You will have gathered this from my use of parchment with the school's watermark._

_Narcissa is glaring at me, so this waste of your time must continue. I'm going to make a bet with her that you won't even read this, so you can score a few points referring to it if you are doing._

_Slughorn mentioned that your father's been ill; I was sorry to hear it. He says it's only to be expected at that age, but I take that as a mark of his easygoing nature. A gentlewizard of Slughorn's years and stature should also be making himself aware of the circulation-boosting and autoimmune supporting draughts he might be taking. Since he really isn't reading this, Narcissa, there's no point in asking questions, but considering the matter does make one wonder what's commercially available. And, of course, how efficacious these commercial brews are. The deplorable lack of interest in potions shown by my classmates suggests, if it echoes the adult wizarding population's attitude, that professional brewing companies wouldn't suffer much from overcharging and skimping on quality, so long as their products were convenient._

_As you were doubtless over how much shorter the first-years seem every year some time ago, there seems little other news that would interest, although various faces inform me that this is a tragically unenlightened view. They're probably covering it all in their letters, anyway, so I conclude,_

_Yours in no doubt fellow-slavery to the formidable Miss Black,_

_S. Snape_

Ev's eyebrows tried to crawl through the ceiling.

"Oh, no," Narcissa winced. "Is it that bad? Severus, darling, I really must insist; you've _got_ to start making some connections."

"No," Evan said, thoroughly bemused. "No, Cissa, it's perfect. It's _perfect,_ look."

Narcissa's perfectly-formed mouth fell open.

"_What,_" Severus demanded crossly.

"I hope you can back that up, Severus," Narcissa told him, evading his snatch for the parchment, "because I'm sending it now and you're never getting it back."

"Back _what_ up?" he further demanded, looking appropriately terrified.

"Did you mean to suggest to Malfoy your potions would be better for his father than anything he could pick up in a store?" Evan asked, smiling.

"Er… not really… that is, I was thinking it—I mean, not just mine;custom and fresh is always better, but… he's not going to read it anyway."

"I'll take that bet," Narcissa told him. "After all, you're not sending it, I am." She regarded the note fondly. "Dry, modest, reluctant, a little too flattering but actually not since Malfoy's a goose—"

"Peacock," corrected Evan. He'd been to the Malfoy estates with his father to grind pigments and wash brushes and so on when Malfoy's parents had commissioned a portrait of themselves under the Carnivorous Gazebo. He'd been five, and one of the damn white peahens had bitten him. They sounded more like ghosts ought to than ghosts did. He asked every new DADA teacher for a syllabus at the beginning of the year, in case he was going to have to brainwash himself into having a less embarrassing boggart.

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Pokes fun at dear old Sluggy… Too many long words, darling, but that's good for a first reaching-out, it tells him you're verbal now and feeling awkward, which he'll think is due to his silly little stature. Lovely! It only needs…" She dipped her quill and wrote _Isn't he precious? —NB_ under his signature before rolling it up in her own letter and applying her ribbon and seal.

"I am not precious," Severus sulked.

"Matter of opinion, Spike," Evan grinned, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "Your knives have stopped."

"Excellent," Severus said vengefully. With a wave of his wand, the floor became covered in sturdy wooden boards and peeled fruit. The peels organized itself into neat piles, some of which combusted, and a rain of very enthusiastic chopping began.

The common room emptied with equal enthusiasm.

Narcissa had a reply back from Malfoy at breakfast the next morning. She tapped Severus on the tome with a triumphant but slightly confused look when she passed him on the way to the doors. When he looked up from the rather dusty book no one had assigned, she said, "Malfoy says to ask you who, if the school did fall to fire and plague, would fiddle."

Severus's eyes went very wide, and he breathed, "My god, someone with a wand knows some actual bloody history."

"I should enthuse at him at once if I were you," Narcissa advised and, giving him a pat on the head, headed out for Divination.

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Art at AO3; link in profile

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1) from the kitchens

2) courtesy of Hagrid, who'd been promised End Product

3) some also from the kitchens, but a lot had come out of Severus's trunk wrapped in rags inked up with preserving runes, and looked like they'd been nicked from people's gardens or snatched off roadsides. Evan could see everyone joining him in trying not to think about it.


	7. November, 1974: Fourth Year

There are junior death eaters in the class of '78, and Quidditch looks very different depending whether it's you or your best friend dodging the bludgers.

**Warnings** for language. And hormonal teenagers. Nothing Ginny wasn't up to at that age. At least, not on camera. Personally, I wouldn't trust Wilkes as far as I could throw her nighty wrapped around a half-brick.

**Props** to duj for identifying Nero as the fire-and fury fiddler of Rome (and for being a prolific Snape-author). I, er, have seen and read _I, Clavdivs_ so many times I forgot other muggles might not instantly know that, sorry... n,n;;; As to why Lucius knows him, anyone who wants to get into politics is well advised to familiarize themselves with the Roman Republic and early Empire (Dan Carlin's podcast _Hardcore History_ cannot be recommended highly enough). Cutthroat, man, cutthroat... A bit more on that, and who Lucius's personal hero really is, in _The Wicket Gate_.

To answer the question of a most flattering Guest—OH HELL NO Severus doesn't let the kids get up to this BS when he's in charge! Slughorn is a gentleman from a gentlemanly era who thinks 'boys will be boys, hohoho, how much trouble could they get into really.' Severus knows kids are evil, risk-courting, sneaky, mean, sadistic, advantage-seeking, judgment-impaired, irrational, horny little bastards, from personal experience.

He keeps sweets and hard cider and lemonade and books with advanced-but-not-really-dangerous spells and potions in his office behind age-appropriate wards, though. Gotta give Slytherins something safe to be sneaky and smug about, or they'll get into real trouble. Case in point: Harry.

* * *

**_November, 1974: Fourth year_**

"—and who ever asked you to 'stick up for me' with a filthy little mudblood anyway?"

Evan closed his eyes and tried to think of a silencing charm.

"You shouldn't even be talking to trash like that," Mulciber went on. He and Severus were hissing intently at each other. To give them credit where due, they probably meant to be quiet. "I know you mucked about with her when you were kids and didn't know any better, but—"

"Don't be so pureblooded you forget to be Slytherin!" Severus shot back derisively. "You think I try to smooth things out with her for my health? Because it makes her look at me adoringly? Because I think," even his tone curled, "you stone-blind morons will be _grateful_? Please. She's _popular!_ People don't just like her, they think highly of her. Her opinion matters. She's one of the voices shaping opinion in this school."

"Nothing in her pathetic life will ever matter," Mulciber said contemptuously. "And the sooner you realize that, Naj…"

"_People follow her lead,_" Severus stressed. "And who's she led by? Twittering romantic bodice-ripper-readers—"

"I read bodice rippers," Wilkes noted. She really shouldn't have been in their room, but she and Avery were snogging these days. Evan was pro-snogging on principle, but he wished Flitwick would teach them all some privacy spells. Wilkes had a talent for artful, but Avery's slobbery grunting noises were fairly repulsive. Evan assumed she was either entranced with her own power or starting a course of personal study on an easy note.

"You read them because they're soft porn," Severus said, waving a dismissive hand at her argument. "You don't take them as an instructional guide to life."

"Not to _life,_" she agreed coyly. Avery shot her a greedy look, but she just said, "Finish my toenails, minion!" and he bent back to the little paint-bottle with a sigh. "See?" she winked at Severus.

"Perfectly," he said dryly. Back to Mulciber, "Evans's friends are less twisted and less sensible than Wilkes—"

"Too right!"

"—And they're feeding her all sorts of rot about what a dark and nasty lot we are, and when you do this sort of thing you _don't help!_"

"It doesn't—"

"It _does_ matter!" Spike railed. "I'm telling you, people listen to her!"

"Good! They should learn a little respect!"

"You're not getting respect, you're getting revulsion!"

"Only because you keep trying to whitewash us! That's what Dark without power gets! Get off the damn defensive, will you? This is _Slytherin!_ If I teach some uppity blood traitor her place, I don't want it passed off as a joke, Snape, I want her to _learn her damn place!_"

"For pity's sake, when _I_ have to tell someone to work out what discretion's for—"

"Go ahead and say 'god's' sake, mudblood, everyone knows you want to!"

"God, Hecate, Salazar, Merlin, Circe, and the damned Giant Squid if you like! The fact remains—"

Evan closed his book. He didn't slam his book closed. He just closed it, with finality.

"Our first match is tomorrow," he said mildly into the sudden silence. "They keep telling me Hufflepuff's a piece of cake, but I still want to make sure I get a good night's sleep. My first game for points and all. Think I'll catch some air. Spike, care to come help me get some last-minute practice?"

"Love to," Severus said civilly, looking cold murder at Mulciber, and fairly slithered to his feet. He stood there for just a moment, looking every inch the hood-flaring cobra for all his lackluster hair, and preceded Evan out the door.

They walked in silence until they were out of the castle, and then Evan said, "Ambassador's not really the job I would have picked for you."

Severus sighed, and scrubbed his hands down his face. "She keeps asking me whether I think his little ego trips down Bully Lane are acceptable behavior. I can't exactly tell her I don't; she'd go trumpeting my excellent attitude to Lupin and Potter and all her girl friends as proof positive they're wrong about me, and then I'd get it in the teeth from half our House. Telling her he's got a vile sense of humor and changing the subject fast's the best I can do."

"Probably," Evan agreed. "But how long do you think you can keep this up?" Severus didn't answer.

When they were halfway to the broomshed, they heard a howl coming from the Forbidden Forest. "Wrong night for werewolves," Evan commented.

"It's just a dog," Severus said. "I've seen it about. Rather Grim-like, but it has a collar. Probably belongs to a townie who can't enchant a strong enough fence."

"Sounds like a big dog."

"Very." They'd reached the broom shed now. Severus said, his voice all laced about with black humor, "I keep thinking of chewing gum when you stretch it too far."

"Most of the House thinks you'll go on a psychotic killing spree when you snap," Evan noted.

"Charming."

"I suspect it'd be a lot uglier than that. Try not to, will you?"

"Just for you, Ev," he drawled.

"Whatever works," Evan said lazily, and summoned his broom and the box of balls.

"Whatever works," Severus repeated, ironically, like a toast.

Getting a broom for him took longer. He didn't have one of his own, so they had to sort through all the school's to find one of the ones that was still relatively aerodynamic. The flying instructor did his best, but the school brooms took a lot of abuse.

Since Evan really did want to practice, Severus obligingly took up the Beater's bat. It was a waste of his brain, with only two players. There probably wasn't a faster way for him to work off his temper before they went back to the dungeons, though, and if they wanted to make it back before curfew—

Oh, wait. It had already been dark when they'd left. Oops.

Evan shrugged the realization off and dodged a Bludger. Beater might not be Severus's strongest position, but he still had a lot of checked aggression to unleash, and a nasty talent for aiming where Evan was going instead of where he was. Whether that would hold for someone he knew less well, Ev didn't know.

He waved Severus a time-to-stop wave, and they captured the balls and landed.

"Nice flying," said Montague, annoyed. She was their lead prefect this year. Evan hadn't seen her coming up. "Pity you had to do it after hours. Suppose I'd been someone else's prefect, or a teacher?"

"It was worth the risk. I had to get him and Mulciber away from each other," Evan said, opting for the bare truth. Montague liked plain dealing. "They were well on the way to homicidal and so was I."

Montague promptly whomped Severus upside the head with a large book.

"Ow," he commented, sounding mildly offended.

"Snape, what is it that every single prefect has told every single drakelet since the House was founded?"

"'Anyone who makes trouble and interferes with my NEWT revision is cold meat,'" he parroted meekly.

"Remember it another time," she instructed.

"That's why we left," Severus protested.

"Remember it sooner."

"How's Greengrass?" Evan asked her as they put the brooms away and headed back for the castle. "Have you drowned him in flower arrangements and color swatches yet?"

"It won't be right away!" she laughed. "Maybe if _I'd_ graduated first, but someone has to do the planning and I—"

"Have NEWT revision," Severus finished approvingly. "Priorities, Rosier." While Evan was still shaking his head sadly at him, he asked, "Montague, can you point us at any privacy charms? Avery's discovered his right hand and there's only so much of Rosier threatening to throw up I can take."

"I did not," Evan said, a little miffed.

"Not out loud. I have eyes."

"Ah," she said wistfully, "the Holy Grail. Sorry, Lance," she said to Evan. "Unless you can get him to do a silencio on himself… the bedrooms are decidedly anti-privacy spells for exactly that reason. Well, nearly that reason," she amended, smirking a little.

"Inconsiderate," Evan lamented. "But really, what's Greengrass up to?"

They chatted about her fiancé until Montague ushered them into their room. At this point, she told Mulciber, "Your turn," and whapped him with the book, too. Then she grabbed and yanked a startled Wilkes by the ankle, and then the belt, and then the collar. "Quite a large right hand," she said drolly to Severus, and escorted the younger witch firmly out.

"Well, I tried. At least she was still dressed," Severus opined philosophically over Avery's startled, woebegone, "Lucy? Lucy? Lucy, where'd you go?"

"My turn, was it?" asked Mulciber, whose temper also seemed to have cooled off.

Severus rubbed his head, saying, "I'd say it must have been _1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi,_ but her hands aren't that big."

"Her knockers are," Mulciber mentioned, perfectly appeased by the assurance he hadn't been thrown under the Knight Bus alone. After all, either power or her engagement had turned Montague surprisingly reasonable, as long as you didn't argue with her.

"Oh, _yeah,_" Avery agreed lustfully from behind his curtain. Evan shuddered quietly (at Avery, not Montague; she was indeed very nicely built), Severus gagged loudly, and Mulciber laughed.

Evan wondered whether other players found their positions as much a metaphor for life as he did. You did your best to stay aloof from the scrum, taking in the players and who which spectators were giving their energy to, dodging inconvenient missiles and keeping your eyes peeled for that one glint of beauty against the mud. And then you made sure you got to it first. Not actually easy, but simple.

Or, put another way, simple, but not actually easy. Even the practices where the lead and reserve teams played each other was only a pale substitute for the real thing, where there was an audience and it mattered and the other team wouldn't be able to get to you at night if you played dirty. Hufflepuffs, it turned out, not only hit hard but had a firm grasp of multiplayer tactics.

When the whistle blew and the House surrounded him with delight and cheering, with back-slaps and hugs for all the players and unwise amounts of Severus's very immature and overpowering cider and mead, Evan thought he was going to have a good night.

After all, he'd done a good job and to good effect. He'd played mouse-and-cat, distracting Macmillan and the Hufflepuff beaters until Avery, Reggie, and Rackharrow had worked out the aforementioned tactics and gotten the score back under control. By the time he'd seen the snitch for real, Slytherin had already been winning by a tidy margin. He was pleased, Gamp (their captain) was pleased, the team was pleased, Montague and the other prefects were pleased, Slughorn was in a transport of delight, the stadium was roaring, surely there was no bad here.

Only there was, because neither Severus nor Narcissa was a sports fan. Severus liked playing, but he didn't follow and he didn't care, and Narcissa thought it was all brutish and unpleasantly sweaty. They came to Slytherin matches, because it was what one did, but dutifully, without enthusiasm, and they'd been known to bring their homework. So when Evan and Reggie turned giddily to them to share the thrill, Evan was brought down to earth much harder than he ought to have been, had he remembered to think clearly.

Narcissa had completely shredded her handkerchief, and also Severus's sleeve. This was very strong evidence that she'd lost her mind, because he only had one spare robe and she was going to have to be the one to fix it.

His other sleeve was rumpled, too, because Wilkes was a sadistic (if largely harmless) ass who never lost an opportunity to hang on him. She, however, was a fan. Her liberal disbursement of kisses proved that she was as thrilled as the rest of the House and had been far too excited for worry to intrude, just like all the sane people.

His cousin's wide, horrified blue eyes made Evan aware of the lipstick on his face, but it was the unreadable black pair that made him want to wipe it off. They were also what made him realize he was bruised all over and his every muscle was screaming at him. He was getting shrieked at, Aunt Walburga style, by bits of his body he hadn't actually been aware of before.

It would have been more polite if they'd introduced themselves first.

Next to him, Reggie was faltering, too. Noticing, Narcissa pulled herself together and rallied magnificently for their cousin. She scolded him for a long time to relieve her feelings, but made it sound lighthearted and proud and let him puff up and chatter at her and pull her over to the food.

Their desertion left Evan and Severus in a little pool of silence. After a time, Severus asked quietly, "Not hurt so badly you need the Infirmary?"

Evan shook his head. He tried to unhinge his jaw to say something, but it wouldn't. Severus's dark eyes were grave and heavy on him, an almost solid weight.

"Come on," Severus said, and led him silently through the hall and to his bed. "Strip," he said, very low. "Put on fresh pants."

Evan tried again to say something, but it still just wasn't happening. He fumbled at his clothes as Severus turned away, coming back with a jar of slightly purple goo that smelled of pineapples and lavender and something sharper, more pungent. "Lie down," Severus said, still with that unnatural calm.

Instead of asking questions, Evan did. Severus turned him onto his face, gentle and inexorable, and then goo-covered hands were skating over his back, his every inch, and then they were digging in.

He realized, distantly, that it shouldn't have been a surprise that Severus had strong hands. All the brewing he did, all the ingredient preparation for Slughorn, it was only natural. The precision of his pressure shouldn't have been a surprise, either, the way he bore down into muscles and stopped just short of torture. It should have been the careful build of that pressure, the way every touch was so slow and warm Evan could relax into it, turning the pain blissful, that was unexpected.

That was the last coherent thought he had until Severus steered him into a warm shower with the nearly empty jar and the muttered expectation that he could handle the last bits himself.

He did.

Returning to his bed washed, dry, ache-free, and smelling of pineapple, he felt almost drugged. Cleaning his hair had taken a lot of shampoo, and he could still feel the ghosts of Severus's hands tingling on his scalp. Everywhere, really. Even, almost, where they hadn't been.

Severus was still sitting on Evan's bed, back against the headboard, his eyes down and his mouth tight. Sitting next to him, Evan found that the blankets had been cleaned, too, and warmed. "You'll ruin all my work if you tense up overnight," Severus said shortly.

Evan leaned against him, and thought he might just fall asleep like that. He could feel Severus's heart against his back, though, hammering. Swallowing to force his sluggish tongue to cooperate, he asked, "Scared you?"

"It's not like practice," Severus said woodenly.

"You've seen games before."

"No one of interest was playing."

Evan nodded. He turned and curled, resting his face on Severus's shoulder, coiled nearly in his lap. A hand crept over his back, feather-light at first and then tight, and then the other. "I'd say sorry," Evan said drowsily into his neck, "but it's Quidditch."

He could feel the deep, slow sigh. "Not good odds of my convincing you to quit, then."

"Nonexistent," Evan confirmed, winding an arm around Severus's back. He might have been more comfortable than this as a baby, when his mum was holding him (she had more padding), but he didn't remember it.

"Just because nobody's died recently doesn't mean no one will," Severus said, but he sounded resigned.

"Cheer up, Naj," he drowsed, curling closer. "We won."

"Hurrah," Severus said bitterly. But by then Evan was, for all intents and purposes, asleep.

In the weeks that followed, Evan felt he'd fallen unexpectedly into someone else's life. Apparently winning at Quidditch meant a lot of people wanted to snog you and touch you and take you to Hogsmeade. He told himself firmly that it was fine to enjoy it while it lasted, but not to be surprised when everyone got their heads turned again by the winners of the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw match.

Hufflepuff had an excellent team this year, there was no denying it. Longbottom, their captain, was a gentle sort who tended to look as though dandelion fluff might float between his ears unimpeded. Too, Houses other than Slytherin expected Ravenclaw to be good at tactics. Neither of these things seemed to be true, at least not this year. Longbottom had a ferocious little Gryffie girlfriend, but there was still plenty of team for the adoration to turn to.

The loss of the school's attention was something of a let-down, even though Ev had expected it. Even though it was also a bit of a relief. It had certainly been nice to be petted and get to know so many people better. He'd learned a lot, and made a lot of useful connections, and his mum was very pleased with the observations he'd sent home.

His homework and art (of the sort not involving models) had gotten somewhat neglected, though. That was a problem—although admittedly it wouldn't matter how many NEWTs he got or how good his landscapes (or interiors, or exteriors, or animals, and _certainly_ not his fantasies or abstracts) were if he couldn't paint bodies, hair, expressions, and clothes well by graduation.

Still, end of term exams were coming up, and Gamp didn't want them getting soft before the break. Especially since they were playing the first game after it. So even if he felt a bit lonely, it was a good thing to have the social crush diverted.

It took him nearly two weeks (to be fair, he was hitting the books hard, making up for lost time) to realize that feeling lonely wasn't something he was used to, and it wasn't only a result of having the Quidditch fans gone.

He just wasn't seeing as much of his friends as he used to. They'd been giving him room, probably. As soon as he noticed this, he started trying to fix the situation. None of them seemed to have much time, though.

Narcissa was the easiest catch. She and her roommates had started seriously on the business of Evaluating Their Future Prospects; it wasn't only Wilkes anymore. They were all always off at meetings of clubs or bundled up in their bedroom practicing clothing transfiguration and arcane cosmetic tricks and things, or having long, gaily lighthearted picnics with Slughorn in the greenhouses. It was easy enough to join her for studying or to do their correspondence together.

Even Severus could be nabbed for that, sometimes. He and Malfoy were having a conversation about the fall of the Roman Republic that, Evan felt, should more properly be called an independent study. He was saving illicit copies of their letters to see if he could get Severus some extra credit in History of Magic—or at least some credit with Slughorn, since there was more political maneuvering than magic in them.

Mostly, though, Severus seemed tired. He'd wheedled (read: alarmed) Slughorn into letting him and Evans take on the challenge of some extra-complicated potions, with a promise that if they succeeded they could start on an accelerated course of study after the hols. This was taking up a lot of his time, but it wasn't making him happy. Evans, Ev gathered (not from Severus, who would just tighten his mouth and change the subject with a brutal lack of craft when pressed), was turning into a right nag.

As a delightful bonus, his spending more time with her meant Potter and his gang were even hotter than usual to harass him. When he didn't have his nose in his books (Evan had suggested glasses, but his eyes were fine, except that he was easily distracted and unnerved by movement in his peripheral vision), he always seemed to be out 'flying it off.' Offers to keep him company were turned down, because, "Rumors of all the curses I surely know are ridiculous enough already."

Evan had to check with Narcissa to make sure he was right and that actually made _no sense_ and gave him no information. Even if Severus was going about cursing things, it wasn't as if Evan would have told anyone. Except Narcissa, of course, but it would have stayed between the three of them.

He saw more of Reggie since they had practices together, but his cousin also seemed to have a lot on his plate. He was panicking about his own end of term exams, and his other roommates seemed to have decided that keeping Lockhart out of trouble was his job. Evan noticed that he and Severus seemed to often be gone at the same time.

This hurt his feelings a bit. On the other hand, Evan wasn't the one who'd have to spend the winter break cooped up with a Sirius whose mother would be yelling at him a lot. So, looking at it reasonably, if Reggie was getting extra defense tutoring, fair enough.

Evan was going to hope it was defense tutoring. If they were dating, Reggie wasn't going to be able to keep from taunting Sirius about it for long and then Severus would be absolutely dead. Or Sirius would. Depending on who was faster.

He was more inclined to think it was tutoring, though (thank Salazar). Their body language towards each other was normal, and there weren't any lingering or stolen glances that he could see. And he was really looking, very sneakily. Besides, Severus kept calling Reggie a little idiot, and Evan thought he'd have left off the 'little' if he thought of Reg as someone old enough to be snogged.

* * *

Art on AO3; link in profile  
_Evan wouldn't understand Severus's angst if it were explained it to him_.  
(warnings for shirtlessness and UST)

_Comparatively few jocks are obsessed with chiaroscuro  
OR: Wilkes is just in it to mess with Snape._

* * *

**Next**: Self-preservation is not high on Severus's list of priorities. Evan is a Taurus. And his mum's a Black. Vinegar, meet baking soda... or, er, was that bleach?


	8. January, 1975: Fourth year

**Warnings** for Evan is a rather tactile person and is indiscriminately happy to cuddle with and smooch people he doesn't detest, regardless of gender. Because in this 'verse wizards aren't particularly interested in muggle sexual mores or gender norms. Of course, Severus is muggle-raised, and working-poor at that, so also mild warnings for internalized homophobia. But, really, don't worry about it.

This is what to worry about: Evan is a Taurus. And a Black. And Severus has no sense of self-preservation. Vinegar, meet baking soda... or do I mean bleach?

**Notes: **A reviewer I couldn't reply to in a PM noted that Narcissa is often portrayed as a bit of a bimbo. In fact, she and Evan are both portrayed that way in this universe—_just not to you. _Your narrator knows better, just like he _doesn't_ know (or care) that James, Peter, and Remus have redeeming qualities. On the note of language, I actually put Severus a bit north of Manchester, in a less urban area. More on that later in the arc. And I am, honestly, humbled that you've charged through this story despite not being a native-English speaker. My beta _wanderinginthoughtspace_ (thank yooooouuuuuu) has helped me simplify, but what she calls 'writing twisty' is one of my besetting sins.

**Thanks** to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, or followed—and to everyone who is going to! I'm posting the first chapter of the fifth-year bit, _The Wicket Gate_, right away: there will be no interruption in service.

* * *

**_January, 1975: Fourth Year_**

They had about a week and a half of peace when they got back from the holidays, although most of it was spent settling Reggie's home-frazzled nerves and shooting down Lockhart's insane and Lestrange's terrifying ideas for same. It was, Narcissa said with _actually_ sterling and possibly even platinum diplomacy, lovely that Reggie's roommates were sympathetic to his home situation.

On the other hand, Bast Lestrange really should have been drowned at birth, along with whoever had repeatedly bounced Lockhart on his head. His brother was a gentleman, if not a wizard one wanted to cross or be muggleborn in front of, but Rabastan was a wizard one didn't want to be in front of at all. Or next to. Or behind. Reggie had been dubbed a cat-snake early because it was too easy a pun off 'Regulus' and he was, really, everybody's kitten they wanted to pet. Bast had gotten his even earlier, because it was obvious he was a stiletto snake before his first mid-term exams.

Severus behaved horribly on his birthday, which should have surprised nobody. He tended to, when embarrassed, and obviously-positive attention invariably got his hackles up. He had a being-sure-it-was-bait problem.

He also had a _thing_ about gifts he couldn't have at least almost-afforded for himself and therefore couldn't match. Wilkes had obviously done it on purpose to be annoying, which helped, but Avery was quite put out.

Evan noticed that Spike's little fit distracted attention from the yearly time-bomb from his father. He'd wondered what kind of sick, obsessive muggle would write such a long book about ringworms, of all things. _Eyeurgh._ Then he realized the title was really 'Ring_world'_ and stopped wondering. There was no point. Muggles were just insane.

Spike was nicer about the little gifts from the kids who were always asking him for homework help, even though these were mostly sweets and he didn't have much of a sweet tooth. That didn't mean he accepted them. Instead, he said plainly (if incorrectly) that one person couldn't eat that much sugar in one term, and made them the kitty for an impromptu Gobstones tournament.

Evan had watched his and Mulciber's absolutely vicious games, so it was obvious Severus had been cheating to lose-by-a-hair like mad. The baby snakes were obliviously smug, which made Montague laugh and Narcissa coo and Reggie puzzled.

Regulus got him a book of wizarding recipes. His mother would have had a fit if Reg had gone into a secondhand shop, so he yellowed it a bit with a charm, thumbed through it a few times, and dropped it down a flight of stairs. Evan gave Spike a watercolor of St. Mark's Basilica he'd done over the summer. These he could deal with, and he was properly appreciative. The painting, in fact, got so many protective charms on it that Evan was amazed they could still see the picture afterwards.

Narcissa gave him an IOU for instruction in a dauntingly long list of charms that would give him control over his clothes. That, Evan thought, could have been interpreted as selfish, since she'd been doing most of them for him since before she would even acknowledge his existence. Severus wanted the control badly, though, and the gift sent him into a library-dive of planning for her birthday. Fortunately, this was limited by the extra work occasioned by Slughorn letting him study at OWL-level. Otherwise it could have gotten silly.

Unsurprisingly, as the game with Gryffindor approached Severus got snappy and taciturn and inclined to pick at his food. Evans was surely partly to blame, but there was the game, too. Evan started saving rolls and fruit from meals for him to eat later, although he usually didn't, and told him, "Will you please relax? I'm not going to die, I promise. Neither is Reggie. He promises, too."

Kicked, Reggie dutifully promised, "What?"

"I know you're not," Severus replied shortly, and showed no sign of relaxing. Evan sighed.

"No, what?" Reggie asked, giving each of them a slightly panicky look. "I should do something?"

"No, rabbit," Evan told him kindly. Reggie wasn't unique in signing things with his initials, but nobody as adorable as he was could get away with it when their initials were R.A.B. Similarly, Evan knew he struck people as absentminded, and therefore did not sign himself E.R. "You just don't die."

"Oh," Reg said, eying him suspiciously. "I can probably manage that?"

"_Ha,_" growled Spike.

"I'm going to study with Bast now," Reg announced, getting up, as though this was somehow a safer prospect than studying with them. Or jumping off the Astronomy tower.

On the morning of the match, Evan was almost too distracted by all the good and ill-wishing from the expected parties to notice something odd. When Gamp came by to clap each of his players on the shoulder and deliver his usual pre-game lecture on what a proper pre-game breakfast should consist of, he gave Wilkes a little nod.

It might just have been due to her looking especially pretty, if that had been that. She, however, nodded back with a roguish wink before going back to fussing over Avery. And before breakfast was over, Avery had come out in painful spots and double vision and had to be taken to the infirmary.

"Who's best reserve Chaser?" Evan asked Reggie. Gamp had said the reserve Seeker needed more practice dodging bludgers and wasn't ready to race him for the snitch, so Evan hadn't been coming to mixed-team practices.

"I-have-no-idea," Reg answered _far_ too quickly. Evan frowned. He smelled skullduggery.

When Gamp assembled the team outside the changing room, Avery's replacement had black hair gathered into a stubby little club with only moderate success, an outsized nose, and shoulders hunched vulturishly with so much defiance that it was an almost physical force.

"What," Evan demanded flatly.

"Oh, right," Gamp said as casually as if he were not a vile and scheming traitor of Fawkesian proportions. "You haven't been coming to reserve practices. Snape joined up a few weeks ago. Don't worry, he's not a disaster. Come on, we're due on the pitch."

Evan dropped back as they walked to grab Severus's arm. "What," he repeated, feeling something start to boil in his stomach and the muscles of his arms. It was most unpleasant. Severus just looked at him, his posture straightening out now he was being directly challenged. It was a quirk of his that usually made Evan smile, but not right now. "This isn't funny," he said.

"It isn't meant to be."

"This is a Gryffindor game! They've got Sirius and Pettigrew on the bats!"

"I am aware."

"If you're trying to make me quit—"

"I'm trying to play," Severus said coolly. "In fact, I'm going to win. I suggest you do the same."

"Rosier! In line!" Gamp called back.

"I'm not done with you," Evan hissed, but hurried back into place before they made it onto the pitch.

Evan could barely see the game, he was so angry. Not useful in a Seeker. He had no trouble seeing Severus, though, dodging and weaving more like a hummingbird than the bat some people liked to call him, jerky and graceless and very clearly always where he meant to be. Evan had called it right: he was pulling nearly all the Bludgers.

At one point, he was vaguely aware, Potter buzzed up to taunt him, but he wasn't interested. He could barely even hear the other wizard; it was as though there were a thick glass wall between them. He faked a snitch-sighting to shake the annoyance, which at least reminded him what he was supposed to be doing.

He started circling, trying to keep his eyes open again. But Severus got a goal in split-seconds before a bludger sent his broom flipping end over end, and he got control over it again only a foot or so above the ground. Another clipped him in the shoulder, and Evan could have sworn that Pettigrew hit him in the eyes with a bat. This was allowed, but generally understood to be Not Really The Thing. Elbows were expected, but bats were just… not on. Crass. One might strike out with them as a last resort, but just because someone was in range? No.

Then Severus was veering off from the word he'd been having with Gamp. He zipped up to Evan, his face full of thunder and nose. "Eyes on the balls, Rosier," he snarled.

"I'm going to kill you," Evan breathed tremulously. His fingers hurt.

"If you want to do that," Severus told him—and dropped three feet to avoid an incoming bludger which Evan barely dodged. Maybe Severus _did_ have some bat in him, hearing it come up behind him. He finished, "If you want to do that, you'll have to end the game."

And then he was gone again.

"Good point," Evan said conversationally to the bent-perpendicular bristles of Spike's completely pants school broom, shaking with rage. "Excellent point."

In the end, Potter was the one to end the game, but Evan's fingers were only inches behind his; a fair showing. Since Reggie got a last-second goal in, Slytherin won by twenty points. Potter couldn't have been paying attention to the board, which was some comfort. Or maybe he was just a personal-glory-grubbing see-it-and-snatch-it magpie sort of Seeker, which would be consistent with his behavior off the pitch.

Evan could feel a distant corner of his brain acknowledging that Severus was an asset to the team. Some of those goals had been his, although nowhere near a third. In a way he'd been responsible for all of them, as his presence had kept the Gryffindor beaters so distracted that Reggie and Rackharrow's only real opposition had been the other team's chasers.

It was a very distant corner, though.

He shook off Gamp, who understandably wanted to shout at him, and made a beeline for the walking dead wizard. He interrupted the almost friendly exchange (of the I'll Brain You Next Time / In Your Dreams variety) Severus was having with Sirius with a cordial, "A word, Snape?"

"Certainly," Severus said, equally cordial. He had a black eye after all (so three black eyes, really), and there was a friction burn on his cheek. They left Sirius rolling his eyes at Slytherin formality and strolled nonchalantly to a secluded corner of the bleachers.

That was when Evan turned like his snake and punched his best friend in the mouth. For some reason, Severus's complete and resigned lack of surprise made him feel he might throw up. Instead, he heard someone whose voice he didn't recognize snarl, "I am killing you, you are _dead,_ I will—"

"That's how much you scared us last time," Severus said quietly, raising his wand to heal his mouth. Evan could only assume eyes were more fiddly and he didn't want to risk it.

Evan's hand ached, and his throat ached, and his hand hurt more after he hit Severus again. Shoved him, really, but it still hurt. "I'm not _afraid,_ you _prat_," it must have been him who yelled, "I'm GOING TO KILL YOU!"

"Yes," Severus said, with a not-unsympathetic tone and head tilt that struck Evan as more him-like than he was himself at the moment. "That's what it feels like."

That went through Evan like an arrow, left him wrongfooted and quivering as he'd never felt. After a few seconds that felt like minutes, Severus reached out and inexplicably wiped at Evan's face with cool fingers.

Evan swallowed. His voice sounded stripped raw, and his eyes were locked on Severus's face where he'd hit him. "You felt like this," he rasped, "and you…"

"It's all right," Severus said, reaching out tentatively and wrapping a hand around Evan's wrist. "It's new for you. I know. You get used to it."

"No thanks," Evan said. He sounded wobbly to himself.

"I know," Severus said again, sending one of his sad and bitter looks down at their boots. He dredged up a piece of an ironic smile from somewhere, and added, without looking up, "It's something of a comfort, though."

"What is?"

"Seeing you can feel things after all."

That was the last straw. Evan couldn't have put his finger on why if he'd sorted through himself for days. All he knew then was that he wanted to scream more than anything, but his throat felt like someone had stuffed a Quaffle down it and Severus's face was blurry, and his eyes and fingers and palms hurt.

Then Severus was holding him, tight and secure and not brained by Sirius or blinded by Pettigrew. His uniform creaked. He smelled like sweat and leather and grass instead of his usual herbal thing, but familiar underneath it anyway. "I," he said quietly into Evan's hair, "_am_ sorry. Even if it is Quidditch. And you won't make me quit, either."

Evan chuckled as he accused, "Mule," but it sounded less like a laugh than rough cloth tearing, or a joint wrenched out of a socket. Which thought made him realize Severus had only been using one hand this whole time.

"That's me," Severus said, and drew back. He hesitated, then kissed Evan between the eyes and touched his face with that weird swiping motion again. It made Evan just want to bury his face in his long neck and hold on through about three breakfasts (by which point surely even Spike would be hungry). "Come on and see Pomfrey before Gamp catches up with you. You've got splinters under your fingernails."

"Severus," Evan said, steadier with the sudden rush of more familiar exasperation, "your eye's swollen shut and you've got an arm hanging loose there." Then he processed what Severus had said and looked down at his hands. Huh.

…Also, ow.

"You're hopeless," Severus told him, which, coming from him, was enough to make anybody choke, and summoned the splinters right out of Evan's hand. This would have been a boneheaded move if he hadn't been wearing a Quidditch glove, but they bounced safely off the leather. "And you may have to have your broom professionally serviced. Assuming it ever consents to fly for you again."

"Ow," he mentioned.

"Good," Severus said, looking thoroughly above it all. "You hit me. Twice."

"If you didn't know you were going to regret cutting me out of the loop, you should have," Evan told him, scowling.

Severus looked at him in fascination and announced, "I want a camera." Evan made a face, and then stopped making interesting faces. That was Severus's job.

They started for the castle, going through the bleachers to avoid Gamp. By now there were quite a number of snogging couples secreted here and there, and some groups passing around potion bottles and butterbeer bottles and twists of fragrant smoking papers. Probably there had been a few even during the game. No one was actually naked, though. Maybe there were some of those under the Hufflepuff bleachers, farthest away from the school.

Just before they emerged into the open, Severus stopped. "I did know you'd hate it," he told the drapery. "I couldn't let you talk me out of it."

"I shouldn't have hit you," Evan said, just as quietly.

"You'd never been really afraid before," Severus said, looking at his boots again. "Next time you'll be more prepared." Then he lifted his gaze to meet Evan's, an eyebrow rising into a cockier look Evan much preferred. "Do it again and I'll hit back."

"Right," Evan said, relieved (because Spike should have hit back _in the first place_), and pulled him in for a kiss to seal their understanding. Practically everyone else in and around their year who wasn't a near relative or Sworn Enemy of Slytherin had pecked, snogged, or groped him at least once after the November game. Some of them had even been Gryffindors-who-weren't-trolls. It was really about time he got as friendly with his best friend as he'd been with Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs whose names he'd barely known at that point. None of _them_ had given him a rubdown when they were furious and he could barely move and everyone else was celebrating and then stayed with him half the night.

It was all warm and sparking for a few lovely, hummy seconds, and then Severus pulled back, a little wild-eyed. "What?" he asked, touching his lips.

Evan blinked at him. It was the same look he'd gotten every so often in their first couple of years, when some new Wizarding custom his mum had failed to mention threw him. "What, muggles don't kiss on the mouth?" He must have seen people snogging before now, though. Maybe it was just one of his ego failures, a who-would-kiss-me sort of thing fueled by the thugs.

"Ah," Severus swallowed, still looking blindsided with his one working eye. "Er… not other boys, they don't."

Evan shook his head. "Completely mental," he sighed. "As if they weren't limited enough, just not having magic. Maybe Bella's right and someone ought to take them in hand."

"…I'd express an opinion, but I wouldn't put it past your cousin to have spies down here."

"Not her style, but other people might," Evan said. He shrugged a little to himself. It was better to let Severus get used to new ideas on his own than argue with him about them. It wasn't as if there was anything to argue about, anyway. "I suppose that clinches it."

"What?" Severus asked, looking panicky.

"Well," he explained, "when you and Reg kept sneaking off, I thought you might be snogging. Looks like not."

"_…WHAT?!" _Evan shrugged, and walked out into the sun. Severus followed him after a moment, hissing like a great green goose. "It was reserve practices! He's approximately three years old!"

"He's one year behind us," Evan contradicted, grinning at him a little.

"Which is really odd," Severus said. It wasn't much less clumsy than his usual subject changes, but he didn't sound like he was evading on purpose this time. Evan remembered he'd said his mum did midwife work in their town, so he might have been honestly diverted by inherited professional interest. "Didn't his mother want a rest?"

"I can tell you haven't met my sweet Aunt Wally. She had a rough time of it with Sirius, Bella says. Lots of nausea the whole time, and afterwards she was really down and her temper was off the charts, most unpleasant for everyone. Including her, one assumes, although she's very good at passing that sort of thing along. So she told my cousin Orion he was getting his heir and his spare as fast as humanly possible and then she was taking a sterility potion. And he'd been living with her, so he agreed with alacrity and sent her to live at a nice resort in France while she was baking up Reggie."

"Fair enough," Severus allowed. "I'm going to go ahead and assume Reg was a less toxic embryo, given that she hasn't made him hate her."

"Or the resort had healers with more expertise in making cranky pregnant witches comfortable than their rather young male house-elf."

"That could do it."

"Or he just looked at what she's like with Sirius and decided he didn't want any."

"True, one does sometimes forget he's actually Slytherin."

"So sayeth Spike Snape."

"Who ought to know."

That was when Gamp found them. Their captain opened his mouth to start shouting, but Evan genially pre-empted him, "Quite. So don't surprise me another time, will you?"

"He's been punished," Severus tacked on before Gamp had finished regrouping. "He hit me."

"He's been punished," Gamp repeated slowly, "because he hit you." Inconveniently observant of him; Evan had dared to hope he'd hear that wrong.

"Blacks and their fits and control issues," Severus said, rolling his eyes in a dramatic display of disgust and despair. "Scared the hell out of himself."

No, he hadn't. It was the memory of grave eyes and attentive hands that had shaken him. Finding out that some people didn't always react to inner tempests by flying into Black rages, even people who sometimes did. Having it proven there were, actually, other ways, that wanting that badly to scream and hurt didn't mean you had to. If it had been a hell or devil in him, it hadn't fled in fear but in shame.

"All right," said Gamp, shaking his head, "but I still say there's something really wrong with you two."

"Just him," they chorused, jerking their thumbs at each other.

"Yeah," Gamp said, not agreeing with either of them but underlining his own opinion. He shrugged. "Nothing like that ever again, Rosier."

"Don't blindside me again and there won't be," Evan returned. He wasn't as sure about that as he'd managed to sound. Spike had proved he could fly through a scrum, and they wouldn't all be Gryffindor games, but Siri and Potter were as popular as Evans, in their own way. There were a lot of people who'd jump at a chance to impress them, and those were the sort of people who tried out for Beater and sometimes made the cut.

"Good, fine. Hospital wing for both of you," he ordered. "Post-mortem tomorrow after dinner. And by post-mortem, Rosier, I do mean yours."

"Right, right," Evan sighed, and they started off again.

But, "Snape?" Gamp called. They turned. "You can't stay on reserve. That's rubbish and it's nonsense and it won't fly."

"The hell I can't," Spike said. "Main team meets every other day. I have homework."

"We all have homework."

"He's taking nine classes and Flitwick's music club and he's a perfectionist," Evan told Gamp, long-suffering. "He turns in two feet for every foot assigned and his handwriting's _tiny_."

"Well, cut it down. Sounds like the professors will thank you."

"Blasphemy," Severus named it, looking genuinely offended, and swept off towards the castle.

"I mean it," Gamp said to Evan. "Can you talk him 'round? Avery's got an arm like a catapult and Rackharrow can fly at speed through the corridors and Black can get things done when no one's looking like nothing I've ever seen, but Snape's got a head on his shoulders and a wicked turning ratio. Even on that shite Moontrimmer. I think with some more practice he'll be able to stop on an actual knut. And he's insane," he added approvingly. "If we told Avery he's too strong not to use as a Beater, which, let's face it, he is, he could spend the rest of the year working on how to aim with—"

"…You want Snape on the main team because he's insane," he repeated, sounding the words out slowly, like oddly-shaped pebbles in his mouth.

"Right. He—"

"_I DON'T WANT HIM PLAYING!" _Evan bellowed, seeing red. "_AT ALL! BECAUSE HE'S INSANE! HE DISLOCATED HIS SHOULDER AND LOST HIS DEPTH PERCEPTION AND BRISTLE INTEGRITY AND DIDN'T CALL FOR ONE TIME-OUT!"_

"Uh." Gamp swallowed, stepping back hastily. "Right. You've, uh, you've got some, uh, things. Your, you should, ah—"

"_NEITHER DID YOU!"_

"Okay, but—"

_"HOW THE HELL IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO MAKE A GOAL WITH ONE ARM AND NO DEPTH PERCEPTION AND A HALF-DEAD BROOM?!"_

"Yeah, okay, but Lance—"

_"TEAMS HAVE THREE CHASERS! NOT TWO CHASERS AND A BLUDGER-SPONGE! FOR A REASON!"_

"Fair point, but, look, you've got—"

"_YOU MENTION THAT AT YOUR DAMNED POST-MORTEM!"_

"Okay, right, I'll do that," Gamp said soothingly, his hands up. He was several steps away now. "Um, do you want me to find some hedge-clippers or…?"

"_NO!"_

Evan tried to get his breathing under control as he watched Gamp try to keep his retreat dignified. A shadow told him Severus was coming back, but he didn't turn even when a hand fell on his shoulder. "Quite a pair of lungs you've got there, Fer-de-lance," Severus said, sounding amused. "And you've sprouted prehensile foliage, did you know? Is it trying to hug or strangle me?"

"Oh." He took a deep breath and pulled it back, leaves and thorns retreating and melting back into his skin. "Rot," he sighed, and shot an obliviate at Gamp's back. Now he'd have to bring up his grievances himself tomorrow. What a nuisance.

"Don't mistake me, I'm just as pleased he won't remember that," Severus commented slowly, whimsical. "I've about got used to 'Spike' and 'Naja;' I don't much fancy being called Bludger-Sponge until I graduate. Better than 'Snivellus,' granted, but still, not my preference. And yet… why?"

"Not supposed to do that in public. Excepting emergencies, of course. Family spell," he explained, a little sheepishly. "It's 'practice every day, Evan,' 'you're not going to school until you can do it wandless every time, Evan,' and then 'use it when you have a choice and I'll cut you off with a knut, Evan.'"

"Rosier. Cle-ver," Severus drawled. "Although it is an interesting spell. How long did your family spend working it out?"

"My great-great-great-grandad's whole life. Many guinea pigs died for the cause. Probably some muggles, too."

"Ah." There was a brief silence. "So… it _wouldn't_ have gotten me thumped by the whole team to ask for a time-out?"

Evan made an aargh sort of noise and yanked him in for a rather bitier kiss, because it was that or punch the idiot again.

* * *

Art at AO3; link in profile:  
_I'm going to win. I suggest you do the same._

_Blacks and their control issues. (Is it trying to hug or strangle me?)_

_Why Evan Thinks Severus Should Not Play Quidditch For Points  
(originally from Brillig)_

* * *

**Continued** in _The Wicket Gate, _largely because people turn sixteen in fifth year. Not that Severus's fifth year doesn't warrant a higher rating just because.


End file.
